I wanted to write this for a long time. So here are top 5 reasons why you should switch banks:

1. UOB’s queues are always shorter than POSB/DBS’s. Why waste time queuing with 10 other people when you can choose not to queue at all? Same for over-the-counter services which are less crowded.
2. Contrary to popular belief, UOB ATMs are not that hard to locate. They are at most places where POSB is, and also at every MRT station, otherwise pretty nearby. In fact I find that there are more UOB ATMs in my area as compared to POSB.
3. In addition, you can draw money from OCBC ATMs (and vice versa) if you can’t find a UOB ATM.
4. UOB’s NOW Visa Debit card has much more privileges than the POSB GO or orange debit card. Cathay movies at $6 and $8, many dining discounts and shopping disounts at many many places. (the only minus point is that NOW card now comes with an annual charge of $18 unless you use your card often enough).
5. You don’t have to carry a extra dongle around for Internet banking. They will send the code to you by SMS. Not sure if POSB has this feature.

So why wait? Take some time to go over to the other side to set up an account, transfer all your money over, and start enjoying the convenience.

(No, UOB is not paying me for this post.)

However, I have a comment to make. I wanted to ask the bank to help me sign a form for student exchange programme application. The UOB person said they do not sign such documents, but instead I have to pay $20 for a certificate of statement. So I went over to POSB and tried my luck. The person asked if I needed the letter statement which also cost $20, but he was also willing to sign the form for me at no charge. Ah, that’s when it is good to have 2 bank accounts. Haha.

My friend says my blog is getting rusty. Well haven’t updated for almost a month. So busy that I’ve to type this on the train haha, thanks to my iPhone which has now been upgraded to 3.0. Finally can forward SMS and copy and paste! However I faced some glitches while upgrading and steve jobs said “npehea” to me (some Russian language).

Last few weeks has been a wham boom bang busy time (lol). My first special term results are out, and as with all other math related subjects, I’ve got a B. However I was quite disappointed with myself as I got more than 30 mins to solve the last question and I couldn’t. Shows that my left brain isn’t working as well. My lecturer Stephane Bressan gave an interesting quotable statement: “Math is not the problem. It is like a doctor who helps you solve your problem. You don’t blame math for your problems just like how you don’t blame the doctor for your sickness. When we are faced with problems, we just have to apply the rules of Math.”. Well think I can’t apply those rules that well.

Currently my brain has switched frequency to my right brain, and I’ve been doing designs on my tablet for NM2208 Principles of Visual Communication until my butt hurts lol. Check out my design blog. I think I prefer such “right-brain” modules and the best part is there are no exams at all – everything is from weekly assignments. Which is fantastic cos means I don’t have to mug like siao. Uni life should be like this! Sometimes I think I should have studied art instead. But it’s okay I should make the best out of my opportunities now, such as scrambling to apply fo student exchange. It is noteworthy that my faculty office actually forgot my application. Luckily I decided to email them one fine day. Now praying that my module mappings can work.

In other events, there was Celebrating The Family, a four-session screening event by nuSTUDIOS of CASHLESS and In Your Own Words.. I was the moderator for 2 of the Q&A sessions. Actually I didn’t do anything much, since most of the talking was by Derek and Melinda. Nevertheless it was still a fun time especially the last night when the actor came and there was much chatter with his company colleagues. Some of my friends and Whit came too. Someone asked me when’s my turn to make one and have a screening…well maybe next time soon….

I also went to CommunicAsia/BroadcastAsia. LG and Samsung had huge booths facing each other, and the former was giving out cubes to promote their cube interface. Frankly, their icons are an iPhone rip-off, and the cube thing is just a marketing gimmick. Samsung’s Jet was a bit overhyped, but the i8910 HD running on Symbian seemed pretty good as it can record HD video at 1280×720.

Video Games Live was awesome. I especially liked Sonic, my favourite console game, as well as Super Mario. Martin Leung performed the medley blindfolded on stage, as well as the catchy Russian folk song for Tetris. You can watch a video on YouTube, his hands move super fast! (*kowtow*) There was also a cosplay competition in which someone dressed up as a Patapon along with a weapon, but couldn’t see his face, won. (At that time I do not even know what is Patapon!)

I also went to the closing event of Singapore Arts Festival: Crackers, a fireworks performance at yishun with jr and the rest. The introduction was a bit long and draggy but the fireworks was cool as they were exploding in-your-face and all around you in a circular fashion. There were also windmill and flying around kinds. Pretty cool. The ushers were quite cute too, as they wore yellow helmets and gave a safety briefing a la airline style.

Soon after was SoC Camp Castello which is the main highlight of the holidays. Somehow due to my friends preference for us to be in the same group, I was made the main OGL of Sir Kay Knights (SK9) with Steve as assistant OGL. It was a daunting task, especially when you have a weird group name and others said it’s gay. Haha. We went to buy cloth from spotlight and cut into bandannas, inspired by VJC’s. We then drew patapon-inspired K-figures on them, each with different weapons. Haha. My group turned out to be surprisingly awesome (as compared to other camps in which other groups always seemed to be better than mine). We had excellent freshies and OGLs who worked great in a team and in games and we managed to win 2nd in the ultimate race (with some people calling me colin.sg) and tailing behind the best group in most of the activities. Moreover, we even had the best male freshman in our group and we won tge best skit thanks to our creativity of merging LOTR, Batman, Patapon and L4D together. Everyone had a great laugh especially the gamers in the audience. Overall, I am very satisfied with my group and I hope my freshies are as satisfied with us for providing good welfare (such as buying ice cream and jelly pudding =p). I hope I did a good job as an OGL. Kudos to everyone!

With so many assignments to do, I am left with not much free time for myself. Combined with all the nuSTUDIOs activities and various meet ups I reckon my holidays will be over soon.

In every person, there is an inherent need to belong to a (or many) community, family, club or society. One is born into a natural family and wherever he grows up in, in school and in work, he will belong to his school of his workplace. And in the school he will belong to the class and so on.

But why do we longed to be belong? Perhaps it is because we all do not want to feel lonely. To belong, it seems that there are some activities which we have to do. When we are in primary school we play hop scotch and hide and seek. In secondary school we have adventure camps and PE games. In JC we have orientation and class outings. In army we have lots of shit. And in uni we have orientation camps and halls.

It seems that such friendship bonds are better forged when there is an intensive amount of contact games and activities, and when teamwork is formed. Moreover, I think that staying over together (in a camp or hostel or holiday) is a major essential component of forging closer bonds. When we rub one another’s shoulders, sleep together and do various other things together, somehow we get to know one another better, as we share intimate, possibly private and precious moments of our lives. We then become more comfortable with each other’s presence and we can click together better.

If these intimate elements are missing in a community, then the bonds created are more superficial, or there may be no bonds created at all. Besides, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and organisation to get everybody together. So actually the easiest solution is to throw everyone in some camp and out of it friendships will be created.

However there is also the problem of maintaining such bonds in friendship. As the frequency of meeting decreases, we tend to feel further apart an stranger. Often, there needs an organiser to plan outings and meetings regularly. Otherwise the group may become strangers. Which is perhaps why a research shows that friendships usually last a maximum of 7 years. Although personally I feel that good friendships should last longer than that.

Well interestingly, I’m writing this during a camp.

Imagine technology can Feed The World, One For One, without going through various layers of money handling. Technology will allow money donations to be made directly to the people who are hungry and poor. Each person can feed another halfway across the world with no strings attached. One meal for one meal, one for one.

This short film was an entry for the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009 Short Film Competition by nuSTUDIOS Film Productions (a member of NUS Centre For the Arts)

Check out this talkshow nuSTUDIOS did recently:

I went to explore the Circle Line when it first opened last Thursday. It was a short walk to the other side from Serangoon MRT, a bit like Dhoby Ghaut with the travelators. The platform is wider, but shorter as the trains have only 3 carriages. Wanted to take the train to Bartley, but quite funny, the announcement said the train service has been disrupted. The Bartley-bound train was stuck there for like 10-15 mins or so. Reminds me of the early days of NEL when many similar incidents happened.

The train is very similar in design to the NEL ones, except that the front has a larger viewing window of the track, and the connection corridor between 2 carriages is now made of rubber instead of metal covering, which makes it look a bit ‘dirty’ to awkward to lean on. There were many SMRT staff around, in their new black and red uniforms, some even wearing ties. They look pretty good.

As I was taking photos, an SMRT staff approached me and,
He said: Why are you taking photo?
I replied: For fun?
SMRT Staff: You are not allowed to take photos here.
I replied: er okay and walked away.

I continued taking photos anyway. Who cares? Here are some interesting sights at Lorong Chuan station.

There was some artwork which was very interesting. Try spotting a F16 in the above, and also NUS. And near NUS, there are two people having a very interesting appropriate conversation. LOL.

Merlion swimming in our waters?

Pedra Branca?

More F16s? haha. They seem to like them too.

So, why this Caucasian can take photo and I cannot? >.<

I love railroads.

I also went to OrchardCentral, the new shopping mall to be opened soon near Somerset MRT. You can walk in and see but none of the shops are ready yet. The interesting thing were the 3 super long escalators that bring you all the way up to level 7 or 8. They are just beside the road, and at the top floor, it is quite scary as the escalator goes higher and higher. Pretty cool.

This is worth a laugh:

Last Sunday, I went for a URA-PAYM Tour Guide (introductory) workshop. It was a workshop meant to introduce youths to tour guiding and hopefully recruit volunteers for future URA-organised tours and exhibitions in the heartlands showcasing the Master Plan.

The day started off with a crash course/briefing on tour guiding by an experienced tour guide who worked in the industry for >20 years. She briefed about planning itineraries, managing people and last-minute changes etc. After that, we hopped on the bus for a mini-tour to Lim Chu Kang/Kranji area for a tour of 3 farms. The journey to LCK feels like going back to camp, but fortunately, the anecdotes by the tour guide lightened up the ride. She mentioned how did the “Chu Kangs” in Singapore get their name, which was quite insightful. “Chu Kang” means “house (beside a) river” in Hokkien/Dialect, while the “Lim” “Yio” “Choa” are the surnames of people who built houses on rivers in the olden days of Singapore. This is because the Sultan of Johore divided the land beside the rivers and let these people manage the land. There used to be many other Chu Kangs such as Tan Chu Kang (lol sounds quite funny) but most of these faded through the years. So now we left with 3 Chu Kangs in Singapore. Now I know…it’s not because the guy’s full name is called Lim Chu Kang!

The first stop was Jurong Frog Farm (which is not in Jurong). We walked around ourselves and saw two frogs mating. Quite interesting, one on top of the other. lol. Over on the other side there’s like mass orgy of frogs in different compartments. Quite gross. Some of them seem to be jumping on top of one another as if they were trying to get out of their compartments.

The next stop was Spring Orchard, which is a fruits and vegetables farm. This one is quite interesting, as we saw fruits like DragonFruit (didn’t know they grow on Cacti), Pineapple, Passionfruit and various others. There was also this strange Sweet Leaf plant in which the leaves can be ate and they are really very sweet! Everyone plucked a small bit and tried. Quite interesting. We were also given free samples of Pitaberry DragonFruit juice made in Malaysia. They taste quite good, wonder why I don’t see them in stores. There’s even the red and white versions, of which the red ones are sweeter.

Before going to the next stop, we passed by Hay Dairies, which is the goat farm. Due to H1N1, now visitors can’t milk the goats anymore. One interesting thing was that all the owner’s 3 cars all have the numbers 8383. The last farm stop was Tropical Aeroponics, which is the first aeroponics farm in the world, as the technology was invented by a NTU/NIE professor. I think I’ve been here before. We were given a short tour of the greenhouse by Chinese nationals. Inside the greenhouses, the butterhead lettuce looks very fresh, and there were a few other plants. We had free samples of butterhead lettuce salad, as well as butterhead juice. I like the juice, cos it’s mixed with kiwi and lime, and it tastes sour and sweet. I like.  We also ate lunch there, which was packed bee hoon/nasi lemak. Speaking about food, we sorta kept eating the whole day as earlier, there was Polar cakes and a pie. It was really nice of them to provide so much food.

The last stop of the day was Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. It’s actually just across the road, but the bus had to fetch us across. Haven’t been there in the longest time! We had a brief introduction by the NParks guy, then we went for a short hike. Armed with a scope, we managed to saw many mudskippers skipping around in the marshy lake. The eyes starring you looks a bit disgusting after a while actually. We were quite lucky as we also saw a green snake, 2 monitor lizards, and 2 squirrels. The squirrel munching on a nut looks very cute. We reached the platform where one can see Malaysia and we walked back. Unfortunately, now isn’t the period where the migratory birds come, so we didn’t see any. (Periods are March-April, August-Sept).

After the walk, we had to plan a itineary for a mock tour to the LCK/Kranji area for different age groups: youth, family and senior citizens. It was a simple introductory task and there were many PAYM/Youth Empire people who were amongst us. At the end of the day, we got to know more about the Kranji Countryside and how it is viable as an alternative leisure area in Singapore. They are going to build a “agri-tainment” farmstay resort there in Sept, called D’Kranji Resort. I think it is a pretty cool idea, don’t mind trying to stay in there in future. It will be interesting to visit the rest of the farms too. They are also going to external the national park connector network to the area, so next time we can cycle through there.

At the end of the day, I went to Joel’s concert at a shophouse in Jalan Besar area. After dinner, I decided to walk through the small roads of Little India area to the MRT station. It was an eye-opening walk to be there on a Sunday night when it is the most crowded. Thousands of Indians thronged the streets, often occupying the whole road, in the coffeeshops, in shophouses selling rice, shirts from $1.90, and much more. Serangoon Road was, as usual, packed with them loitering on open fields and there was a performance going on in an open-air tentage stage nearby. It used to be a common sight for me when I was younger and had to take bus 147/111/85 home before the the days of the MRT. Now with the MRT, I only see the crowd when the board/alight at Little India/Farrer Park MRT. It is really, really, really, overwhelmingly crowded.

Another interesting sight just before the MRT station was that there are telcos also leveraging on the crowd. Both the red camp and the green camp were selling pre-paid cards at rock bottom prices along with lucky draws in the form of spin-the-wheel and the like. Quite interesting since they do it in open air shophouse corridors and open spaces, as compared to the usual interior atriums of shopping malls. Heck, the green camp even provide free feet massage for them! lol.

Been busy the past two weeks of the holidays/special term doing various filming stuff in nuSTUDIOS.

(Before the filming stuff started, I went for the CFA Retreat at Chevrons. It was meant as an introduction of CFA to the new excos. It was a long workshop-filled day, and the best part was the food provided, especially the pool-side BBQ at night. We kept eating and eating! Haha.)

The first one was Microsoft Imagine Cup Short Film Competition. A month or two back, Sabrina and I decided to give it a shot and submitted a simple storyboard. We got through the first round and now we are supposed to create a 3 min short film based on our storyboard. The theme for this year’s competition is “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today”. Our story was about solving the problem of hunger, and our technology is some form of wireless transfer of money (e.g. ez link) which allows people to buy meals for someone across the world by buying a meal one-for-one.

And so, I got my cousin Dave, and my tutorial mate Siying to help me as the cast. We filmed everything all in one day last last Friday. It was also my first time using the Brevis/RedRock Micro camera rig, and I spent a few hours configuring and playing with it the day before. Took me a while to figure out how to align the lens. The results were fantastic and SLR-like quality. Not much colour correction needed! We filmed the “rich person” part in the Arts Canteen, and the “poor person” part right in our own studio room. Check out our set! :

It was a pretty fun day, and even though there were not much people helping us. However, in the studio, vic, yishu and zy managed to give us a hand in setting up the lights etc. After the filming, I came back on Saturday to edit. Added the music on Tuesday and the finishing touches on Wednesday before submitting online. Also managed to ask our friend Charles for the voice-over narrations. I’m quite happy that we managed to finish on time!

The next film project was Dr. Seet’s talkshow – An Audience with Dr. Seet. Dr. Seet is a NUS TSD Lecturer and he has this idea of doing a talkshow in the form of online short 3-5mins video cast. As he has many connections in the Theatre scene, it will be mainly about theatre and will be uploaded on fifo.sg. He kindly engaged nuSTUDIOS help in terms of filming, and we managed to get together to do a pilot shoot last Saturday. The venue was a small little room in Action Theatre. Originally, I thought we will get a black box kinda room or something, but in the end it was this little room which was quite crammed. Nevertheless, we managed to make the full use out of it and created a talkshow set inside! Sab bought a nice huge grey cloth (which is a neutral colour and acts as a good backdrop), and we got props like sofa, coffee “table”, lamp and a plant from the office upstairs. Together with the lights, the set looks pretty professional! Here’s a sneak preview:

It was a pretty long shoot, and we got to see stars like Nelson Chia, Lorretta Chen and much more. It was quite a fun process, since it’s our first time doing this. All in all, we shot 4 episodes, and look out for them to be finished and uploaded soon!

Today, with invitation cards provided by CFA, I attended the opening gala of the 19th European Union Film Festival at GV Vivocity with a few other nuSTUDIOS friends. It was a prvilege to be there as there was excellent food and entertainment. Swedish meatballs, creamy spinach and shitshake mushrooms and even sashimi! Awesome. There’s even wine served. Very high class indeed.

There were a lot of Europeans around. Originally I was thinking if there were enough people to fill up the cinema, but soon it became very crowded. We were hoping to catch some familiar faces, but not much, except for Hossan Leong. Haha. In the end, we managed to meet some people from NP’s FSV and had a quick chat before the screening started.

After some formalities and speeches, the NTU ADM’s documentary, Sacred Crane, Mortal Birds, was screened. (Everytime I think about them, I always wonder that I could be studying there now. Okay let’s not go towards that topic now.) It was done by Boo Xinying (related to Boo Junfeng?) and we managed to bump into her and her lecturer for a quick exchange after the screening. It was pretty cool as their school brought them to Tibet to do the documentaries about the birds, and the scenery there is very nice.

The next feature was Wolf, a Swedish film about the people who rear reindeers and their conflict with the law and wolves, a protected species in Sweden. It was quite a slow film, with the climax reached when one wolf was killed. However, towards the end, it showcases a bit of a father’s love and sacrifice for his son (sounds familiar) and his connection with his dog. However, the scenes of snow, mountains and reindeers were very beautiful.

An eye-opening day.