This year’s SoC rag dance is considered quite slack as compared to last year, for the practices started later in the holidays. From 3 times of 4 hours a week (2-6pm), it gradually evolved to everyday 8 hours per day as the days to the actual rag day were numbered. The dance choreographers, Alicia and Jazreel, worked very hard to train us, most of us first-time noob dancers. For myself, it was also good way to continue my dance classes from UCSC.

At first, it was quite fun to learn the new dance steps, although some of them, especially the “Do you remember” song, were quite difficult and fast. Audacity helped in slowing down the tempo of the song, and we learnt from slower tempo to faster tempo. After a while, it got a little repetitive as we kept practising the same dance steps, waiting eagerly for the newer steps to be taught. Somehow, I could not get some of the steps initially, and was accused of skipping steps and doing shortcuts. Haha.

Then, the people who did the cheerleading stunts last year started practising for them. At one of the sessions, I was asked to try to be a backspot base for one of the flyers as the original person was not around. After 3 or 4 tries, I successfully lifted up the girl from in front of me to sit on my shoulder. However, it activated my old injury in my bicep/tricep, which is probably a muscle tear from army (and is also the reason I could not surf). Hence I was not able to continue anymore. For some reason, the muscle pain reoccurred quite a few times over the next few weeks, even during some seemingly minimal action like doing a star jump or swinging my arm upwards. However it was a good experience to be able to try the cheerleading stunts.

As the day drew closer, we stayed over in school for practices with the float at night, once during the fow camp, once on Monday, and the last two nights before the actual day. The nights were filled with waiting for midnight, which is when the shuttle buses stop operating, and practiced till like 3am or so. Not forgetting playing lame games like mi-mi-mi-re-mi-fa-so-mi and the nightly supper from the now popular Al-Meem Northern Indian restaurant, with Naans, roti-johns and Teh. It was also always a hassle to find a place to bathe, whether is it ICube or SRC, and we always end up sleeping close to 5am.

Very soon the actual day arrived. Before that, it was filled with pep talks from Peide, Ziqing and lots of scolding from our choreographer. Our energy level was not enough, we were not up to performance standard. We always also screw up our blocking and centre marking. There was also a lot of time spent on decorating and painting our weapons, as well as buying materials and sewing our custom made costumes. We wore a vest made from old CGF shirts, and lion-dance-like pants wirg blink blink shiny stuff. The actual day arrived, we woke up at 5.30am to start doing our make-up, hairdo, and everyone was transformed into “pretty boys” in 4 hours. Super gay.

We had free McDonalds for breakfast and was transported to CP10 for the pre-judging posing and static displays. Looking at the other floats and costume-clad people, the mood was exciting and colourful. Our float is the biggest and best one so far as compared to the previous years, yet it was still smaller compared to other faculties’. But it is still beautifully done.

After lunch and a few practices, we were ferried to a holding area in a tent near SRC. The mood was anticipating yet tiring, due to the hot sun and warm weather. Peide say we must not go into shag mood, but we must hype and warm ourselves up and prepare for our performance as we were the first group. After some warm-up excercises, we did the dancers-woosh, and we were ushered to the SRC tracked.

Soon our moment arrived, the float was pushed in, and the initial twinkling of the tea party song was played. We jumped unto the stage enthusiastically, and I was clapping my hands up in the air. Then, OUCH my old injury was activated again >.< by the clapping, of all timings! I was struggling to dance tea party, but fortunately managed to twist my arm back before the fighting part with Julian and Brandon. The diagonal lines were good, and the second fighting seen was done well. Everything else was good, except the end when some of them were not able to finish their stunts successfully, and they were quite sad after that.

After our dance, it was a fun time to watch and admire other faculties’ dances, as well as taking photos and videos. The highlight of the night was the SYOG flame arrival ceremony, complete with fireworks and fanfare. It arrived on a modified open-top coach bus (similar to NUS Shuttle Bus), in a safety lantern, before being transferred to the torch, and then it lighted up a cauldron by President and 2 athletes. It was the first time rag ended with such a big bang, and I guess it was a good addition and also interesting to see the halls dancing in different countries’ culture. I must say the Mexican dance is a pretty good rendition, as I have watched some of it in California.

There was a post event party in which they played some cool songs and the SoC people got very high and we started forming a human train along the field and running all around. We then proceeded to the float for a massive photo taking session and multiple camera horing, cheering, some tau poks and crowd surfing and what not. It was a tremendous wonderful cheerful ending for the whole orientation week.

Joining rag dance allowed me to make some new friends, as well as bond better with existing ones. It also gave me a chance to experience the discipline and effort needed in a dance performance, as well as learning how to respect the choreographers and fellow dancers by dancing with all our might, putting in 100-150% of effort (often any figure >100% is an overly exaggerated figure), and putting on a great big smile unto the audience. =D

And as they say, for us, it’s about the process, not the final result. Although many other groups will beg to differ.

But ever since VJC mass dance, I always liked dancing with a huge group of people. It is a fun activity, a good form of exercise and it has somewhat synonymous qualities with cheering: it bonds people together, it shows unity and teamwork, it creates camaraderie. And there’s also a saying that if one person does it, it looks stupid, when a group of people do it together, it looks beautiful.

And also, it is about trying new things. I joined ballroom dance, hip hop dance, and zumba dance classes when I was in UCSC. So why can’t I do the same in NUS? It’s probably one of my last few chances to have fun and do something different, something which I do not want to regret not doing when I grow older, something to be involved in, as part of SoC, as part of NUS. It’s a good way to get to know and bond with other SoC people. As much as I do not support the idea of float-building in rag, dancing is a different story in my opinion.

David danced before the LORD with all his might (2 Samuel 6:14).
As the Switchfoot song goes: This is your life, are you who you want to be?

NM3215 Advertising Strategies

After one of our group members left, it is still quite comfortable to work in a group of 4 I think. The project was to do an advertising campaign for Kia Motors Singapore for the launch of the new Kia Soul. This project was a lot of work, I spent a lot of effort on the creatives such as the poster designs and presentation. And although we did not intend to do a video initially and it was not the requirement, we decided to spend one afternoon to do a simple photo shoot and we shot a short hilarious video. Thanks to Daryl, Shuhui and Majella for the wonderful teamwork! Okay, the video is too embarrassing to share, but here’s some nice posters which I came up with

CS3240 Human Computer Interface

I thought I would like this module, but the lecturer didn’t make me like it. But she’s very friendly though. But I think our project is over and above what the module requires. There’s too much programming involved for a GUI (graphics user interface)-based project. It was meant to be a Silverlight/Flash project, but we used Javascript/HTML/PHP instead. Nevertheless, we still managed to come up with our very own NUS Shuttle Bus website. I learnt a lot of jquery along the way. The timings are just dummy values, so don’t trust it. haha. Thanks to Chris for all the coding, and also Rachel and Meng. Here’s a screenshot:

CS3249 Elements of User Interface Design

Again, as with most computing modules, the requirements for the project are above what is required of the module. However, I enjoyed this one especially, because the project was to code a (Wii)Flash game which uses the Nintendo WiiMote as the controller. How cool is that! The WiiMote is connected to the computer via bluetooth, and you can use infrared transmitters or candles (yes they work too) to transmit infrared signals for the translation movement. For the first time, I volunteered to do the coding instead of doing the design. I ended up being one of the main programmers. It was quite amazing, praise God for I managed to pick up ActionScript quickly and we managed to finish our project on time! Wish I could export the flash as a game playable by mouse, but maybe next time. Thanks to Chris, Favian, Angelin, Ling Wei and Melissa for the fantastic teamwork! Here’s a cool screenshot:

Thank God for all the wonderful time and time abundantly that he has multiplied! I managed to get enough sleep for most of the days, except for last weekend in which I was in school till 1am on Saturday and I slept at 4am on Sunday. But only one weekend. The rest of the weekends were miraculously wonderful.

And now, for the exams. 2 more weeks =)

(During the event, some people said the scarf looked not too bad, and I need to have the self-confidence to bring it on. My cousin said I looked like Rain? I guess I need to be less self-conscious and more Jesus-conscious! As You are , so are we!)

The place looked very familiar, then I realised that I went there before 5 years ago for VJC’s 20th Anniversary Gala Dinner. Ah…we had a cocktail reception before proceding in for the dinner. First time there was the ROM solemnization ceremony incorporated before the dinner. Quite interesting. The food was good, my favourite was the cold dish and the dessert was not bad.  Coincidentally, I met yongxue there. Somehow, he knew my cousin through his workplace. What a small world after all…

My cousin hired a pretty impressive video team, which did a short-film-quality MTV-like same-day highlights video, which showed what happened during the tea ceremonies in the morning. It was very cool, the colours were graded very well and the film-like HD quality was quite good. Some samples of similar videos can be found here.

Going to a wedding also makes one think about what would yours be like in future. But I guess it is too early for me to think about that now!

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School has been good so far. God is good, I have been praying for abundant time and God is certainly faithful in many occasions to multiply my time. On one occasion, I actually reached school half hour earlier. I also managed to finish my CS3240 report in 7 hours on the deadline itself, and the other projects are going on schedule. CS3249 has been the most interesting. Although the project – designing a Wii game – has little to do with the module name, Elements of User Interface Design, it is one of the most fulfilling projects so far.  I did not want to the usual design role, and hence I took up the courage to do the programming role for this project. I had to figure out ActionScript, which was my first time, as well as using the WiiFlash API to program the Bartender game (which another group designed). I had to find out with my teammates how to ‘pour’, ‘shake’ and map the cursor based on the infrared sensor. We managed to create a prototype last Monday, and it was fun and amazing to see the game work. Everyone’s been cooperative and the other groups were quite impressive too. NM3215 Advertising Strategies is going to be stressful as our report about Kia Motors is due next Friday and presentation after that. As for Maths, it is a struggle as always to learn and keep up, but by His grace, I will. NM2101 has been interesting but I hope it is not too difficult to score. Somehow, my essay-writing skills are going raw.

Last Monday, I attended the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum with MM Lee as Guest-of-Honour. It was an interesting but short event as it was my first time in such an event hearing MM Lee speak life. Quite insightful and it is obvious that many people are still interested in politics and Government, just that most of our generation tends to be more nonchalant. MM Lee said that in order for our generation to survive the next 50 years, we need the ruggedness, roburst attitude, will make it, do -or-die attitude like our grandparents/forefathers and understand what it means to be poor. Our forefathers fight against all odds (just like how now Foreign Talent fight with us), and built the Singapore as it is today. I think our generation still has some way to go to learn that, living in so much comfort.

It’s week 10, and 4 more weeks to go. Not long later, after exams, and I will be flying off! For my SEP! To the land of freedom and liberty…in a flight that will cost as much as a computer. haha. I am looking for flights now, it is hard to find a cheap one. Trying to arrange to meet Josh P. there for Christmas too.

• Write about what happened to your own life – Script is king
• Film industry is about cheating/convincing people, you can make 4 policemen look like 100 policemen
• Money No Enough had a lot of background noise from the old 35mm camera. And there was also a lot of noise from nearby construction sites when filming. However, a film critic from the West said the film’s sound is an authentic showcase of Singapore’s state of development with all the construction noise (unintentionally) placed in the background
• MDA should have a computer graphics (CG) fund to fund productions to make more use of CG so that our industry can grow to a newer level. Because many directors do not have the capaibility to try and experiment, and hence we will never get to grow in that area.
• Drama training is important for scriptwriters and directors to know how actors act and portray themselves

I asked a question on how local audience don’t like Singapore films…how do you reconcile the fact that you are producing for an audience who don’t watch their own films? He replied that it is hard to please everybody. But don’t give up, if you have a good script, there will definitely be an audience who watch your film(s). Jack Neo has proved that with his films’ box office takings despite the many critics around.

It was very interesting, and it was not as difficult as I thought. The teamwork and sense of achievement is quite great and fun, and it was pretty cool to see the Flyer and the Singapore skyline from the sea, with the waves whoshing as your boat rocks left and right. Splashing water seems to be the norm, as everyone purposely went close to another’s boat (we had 3 boats of about 8-10 people each) and started splashing water at one another. Heck, the instructor even thought us how to splash water effectively using our oar!

Our instructor was darn good, one stroke of his oar is > 8 of us combined together. When he starts rowing, can really feel the boat going much much faster. haha. px and ed kept playing with water behind me, as they had to bail water out whenever people splashed water at us. After many strokes, your back will feel a bit strained, but somehow after the whole thing, I didn’t feel any strain in my arm or back at all. wonderful, can’t wait to try again next time if there’s chance, as we didn’t manage to get to Marina Barrage due to limited time.

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On a side note, ST-Volkswagen lucky draw is hard to win, yet there are so many participants! Went down with JG on that day. And bus 985 actually allows me to reach home from Bukit Batok/Timah faster than from NUS. Amazing.

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Last week was a week of fests. TimbreFest @ UCC was quite interesting, especially with this female rocker singer Shirley and the Unexpected. Free Tiger beer, which is the one of the lousier ones which I dislike. Over at NUSSU JamFest, it seemed pretty successful. After all, who doesn’t mind not 1, not 2 but 4 free drinks? The Japanese Asahi beer is pretty good, it is ‘super dry’, hence it doesn’t give you a gassy/bloated feeling after drinking. And it was the first time I tried Singapore Sling, in its cute red bottle which some said was alcoholic Rose Syrup lol. I would say it tastes like 7up/Sprite that kind. The Japanese Sake is a bit too thick to be drank by itself though. And the drinks ran out at about 11pm already. I left early due to Film School and due to the Butter Factory music being not very fantastic. The setup was pretty good, with the Goodfellas and Jack and Rai and a few other bands performing. There were chairs and tables to sit and chill, as well as stages for people to dance on. The funny thing was, I heard the stage collapsed at the end of the event! Darn funny, caused a dent in the MPSH apparently. The lights were good, although I wonder what are the rafia strings deco for. I would say it is one of the better NUSSU event that they ever organised.

Jazz Band concert was very very good, I would say much better than both fests! lol. They sing well and play well and the music is pretty soothing. The rap song experimental piece was quite interesting, and I liked some of the dance moves and choreography. Maybe next time I should join a band. Haha!

——

Film School on Saturday was a miracle. Praise God for everything went well although everything was in a rush. Moving from CFA to COM1 is not a good idea, especially when we got so much equipment with us! Luckily we took a cap instead of pushing the trolley in the hot sun. There was a minor accident while we were carrying the trolley as my hand slipped. Luckily no equipment was damaged. Also, the programme was pushed back due to people coming late etc. and also Danny’s voice was losing his voice. Fortunately there was a microphone in the seminar room. We managed to finish everything on time and rush back to UCC for the jazz concert.

Pray that all goes well at EMCC tomorrow!

REPORTER: NUS has just completed her 51st year of rag and flag. What do you think is the true spirit of rag?

RAGGER 1: All about my friends, the bonding, experiences..

RAGGER 2 (proudly): The sense of satisfaction of creating something out of nothing.

RAGGER 3: How we can use recycled materials to create the best and most beautiful float design.

NUSSU REP (even more proudly): It is a NUS tradition so we must uphold it.

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: Rag? Orh, the Chingay float thingy ah.

REPORTER: What inspires you to spend all your holidays on float building?

RAGGER 1: All my friends are here. They ask me to join, so I join lor. Besides, they say it is a once in a lifetime experience.

RAGGER 2: It’s all about the human creativity and innovation. How we can come together and invent something out of nothing..

RAGGER 3: Yah, inventing something that looks beautiful from recycled materials. We buy, er no sorry, collect recycled materials, for example red cans, to create the red colour roof that we want.

REPORTER: Did you just say buy? I thought you are supposed to use recycle materials?

RAGGER 3 (on the condition of being anonymous): Ya we recycle the red cans that we buy. Otherwise, you expect us to collect cans from the coffeeshop like the uncles and aunties meh? Those cans have to wash and scrub, some more there will be soil and maggots inside. Very troublesome leh. Then if the cans are dented also cannot use. Besides, there will also be white cans, green cans and definitely not enough cans for our red roof. So we buy red cans, then drink ourselves or let the plants help us drink lor. Same for newater bottles.

REPORTER: Wow, I did not know that. What about those milk cartons?

RAGGER 3: Oh that. Well you don’t expect us to drink tens of cartons of milk and fruit juice right? So, we buy the carton material straight from the factory. Cheap, clean and perfect for our float building.

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: (gives a surprised look)

REPORTER: Where do your groups get all the money to buy these things?

RAGGER 3: With the support of our alumni and some sponsors. At least our float is in-house engineered and built, unlike  some other group which outsource their float’s pneumatic  system to some company and spend thousands of dollars.  Heard their rag cost a whooping five figure sum.

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: Five-figure! So much money for one stupid float?

REPORTER: What? That expensive?

RAGGER 3: Yah, it is quite unethical and unfair to those of us who spend our own effort and strength to build the float…

NUSSU GUY: All the floats are judged fairly according to our rules and regulations…

REPORTER: What about the smoke? How did you get the smoke puffing at different directions?

RAGGER 2: We use fire extinguishers. Very innovative right? Since these extinguishers are already left lying on the wall for decades unused. Haha. So we make use of this opportunity to spray the smoke through some piped system at different sides of the float.

RAGGER 3: Yep, talk about making use of whatever resources and materials we have.

RAGGER 1: Ya, very fun. That day my friend anyhow spray at me…

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: One hall’s extinguisher was harmful to the environment. Make everyone cough and choke. Like what the heck?

REPORTER: So, do you think the time and money is well spent?

RAGGER 1: To bond with my buddies and gain teamwork experience, definitely. All the supper and long nights spent on building the float, once in a lifetime mah.

RAGGER 2: In the spirit of innovation and hard work, yes.

RAGGER 3: It is well spent, otherwise how can win?

REPORTER: So, is it just all about winning the title? For honour and glory?

RAGGER 3: Er…

REPORTER: Isn’t the money and time better well spent in some overseas community project or donated to the charities? I mean, a five-figure sum can easily build a school in a third world country!

RAGGER 1: Building up the spirit and what they call…cama-something…camarader…aiya you know that word!

RAGGER 2: As I’ve mentioned, it is in the spirit of creating something new. Without money, how do are we able to invent something so beautiful and entertaining?

RAGGER 3: Hey, don’t anyhow say. We did not spend five-figure unlike some other group. We are very cost-conscious and spend the minimal (whispers) and declare the minimal. More money is collected in flag day anyway so who cares!

RAGGER 1: I also got go Orchard with my buddies to collect money with the tin cans. So don’t say we never do our part for charity okay!

NUSSU GUY: A total of over $480,000 are collected on flag day for our beneficiaries.

REPORTER: But wasn’t rag intended to show off creativity to the general public so that they will donate money for flag? Now that the two events are separate, rag just seems like another entertainment show?

NUSSU GUY: If there is no rag, there is no flag. If there is no flag, there is no rag.

RAGGER 1: Flag was very fun with flashmob! Somemore we collect money for charity mah.

RAGGER 3: Yah, we must also collect the most for flag then we can win the overall shield. Otherwise no shield.

RAGGER 2: Don’t need to win the overall shield. Win best design is good enough for our creativity skills.

REPORTER: I sense some rivalry here. Is it just about claiming that title for your group?

RAGGER 3: Maybe, if some other group can spend some five-figure just for the title, then perhaps it is just for honour.

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: I do not understand why people can drop everything they have just for the title. Ten years down the road, they would probably look back and laugh at themselves.

REPORTER: Some of the floats were very impressive. What happens to them after the rag day?

RAGGER 1: Dunno leh, my friend ask me to pick the rubbish and throw in the bin.

RAGGER 2: The best float should be preserved for display to showcase our creativity.

RANDOM NUS FRESHIE: They should recycle for next year!

RAGGER 3 (again, on the condition of being anonymous): Hmm, I think some of them are being driven straight into the garbage area, literally.

REPORTER: Thank you very much for all your responses. It is amazing how 6 months worth of work, for one day of glory, and all goes to the trash. And the many man-hours and money spent. And much more hard work, sweat, blood and tears. All in the name of the so-called ‘RnF Spirit’…

(to be continued…)

FOW was good, although of course FOC was better. My group, darth vader had quite enthu group of guys but a few not so enthu girls. We had a great time at West Coast Park, and the amazing feat was that 200 over people bidding for their modules in the midst of our games at McDonalds. All thanks to Wireless@SG. Our group actually managed to win the most enthusiastic group, although I think in terms of cheering we are actually quite quiet. But they said we had good attendance and we participated in most games actively…that’s why. It was quite funny because some of the girls couldn’t even remember everyone’s names on the 2nd day and I had to keep testing them. Haha.

Food for thought: About thousand over litres of water and thousands of plastic bags were used in the name of fun. Is it worth it? Is it a wastage? Probably. Water can be sourced easily through the water cycle, although in water-scarce Singapore we are taught to save water. Plastic bags harm the environment when they are buried or burnt. Maybe someone can invent a more environmental friendly way of playing with water bombs and perhaps save the hundreds of similar camps which play water games. And earn some money.

I think the best part was when Guo Ting suggested we should go NTU for our flag day. As the saying goes, the most dangerous place is the safest place. True enough, as there were nobody else in yellow ‘competing’ for our business. Some of the people who saw the nussu on our shirts remarked: “wah NUS dare to come here collect money ah” “you have come to the wrong place” etc. Nevertheless there were still many people who donated. The most fun part was when we did two freeze flashmobs in front of their McDonalds. We stood in the shape of a heart, held our cans in front, and froze for 5mins and took a video. It certainly caught attention as many people thought it was innovative and donated money. The next one we did was not as successful, as we stood spread out and pointed at someone standing in the middle. All in all, I think flashmobs are darn fun and we should do more of them.

Our flashmob video was submitted along with another entry to represent SoC. There was an online voting and SDE was spamming it. After clarifying there are no rules, being computing students, we set up tens of laptops to spam the voting automatically using iMacro on firefox. Haha it was quite funny. In the end our votes were 6000+ against 3000+. But alas, the votes were removed from the judging criteria and SDE won the prize in the end.

Rag day was impressive. Amazingly, SoC won the least cost float, which is probably the first time we won something I think. And being least cost is certainly keeping the spirit of rag, unlike some other group which spent $x0,000 amount of money and even outsourcedk the pneumatic systems to some company.

Amidst the orientation, I had to rush off for Choices for 3 nights at ian’s and yoga’s house. It was very tiring as the camera rig was very heavy and it seems as if I have done hundreds of push-ups as my arms hurt. It was a good experience working with the actors, and my first time working on set with extensive lens and lights. It is very challenging to pull focus, and much more when most of our scenes were night scenes. Besides Yoga’s house had limited space to maneuver around. ian’s condo was very nice. We also went to Jurong Point to film, in which they were nice enough to grant us permission. The security guards were watchin us and people were staring at us as if we were from mediacorp.

After all the rarrar, school starts. I’m quite looking forward to this semester as finally I’m studying more of what I like to study except for one – math. May God’s favour be upon this semester!

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.

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)