VICOMP 2005

phew, finally it’s over. can’t wait to handover soon =p

there were some hiccups though, questions aren’t challenging enough, online phptest had too short cookie expiration times, prog round was apparently too tough for them, and there were some complains especially by this bald HCI guy (whom I always see at camp itac and ghz) who was questioning the question about GNU. and there were some other things which paused the final round, I was too stunned to say or react or make a decision, just wanted it to go on and finish, so I kept quiet and wait for mr gi’s instructions…

anyway what is over is over, overall it was not a bad job in making things happen and the j1s are great.

i’ve not been in lesson-mood the past few days
yesterday my SPA skill B…i connect the polarity wrongly, and the capacitor leaked and burst and mr har replaced it for me and demanded that i read the qn properly and connect properly -_-
i connect wrongly cos i thought +ve must connect to -ve for charges to flow…

ah still got glopos to do…

bzbz

as u can see i’m too busy to post anything these days
been preparing for VICOMP 2005 on wednesday

last sun went to fish and co with the thinkquest team to celebrate mf’s bday as well as treat mf and kx for helping us with the chinese. the food was nice, just that it was quite a lot. swordfish – 2 huge pieces, bigger than a chicken breast u get at kfc, chips and veg for $16.90. the serving was really huge, even much more than the fish and chips at $14.90. wow. i managed to finish it after much difficulty. hmm the restrooms at fish n co were interesting….had some graffiti and jokes written on the walls.

i just felt some strong obvious tremors a few moments ago before I wrote this…hmm..wonder where got earthquake…

[Luke 21:10] Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.
[Mark 13:7] When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

You’ve got mail from above

To: YOU

Date: TODAY
From: GOD !
Subject: YOURSELF
Reference: LIFE

This is God. Today I will be handling All of your problems for you. I
do Not need your help. So, have a nice day.

I love you.

GOD

P.S.

And, remember….

If life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle,
do Not attempt to resolve it yourself !! Kindly put it in the SFGTD (
something for God to do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations
will be resolved, but in My time, not yours.

P.S.S.
Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by
worrying about it. Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are
present in your life now.

If you find yourself stuck in traffic; Don’t despair. There are people
in this world for whom driving is an unheard of privilege.

Should you have a bad day at work; Think of the man who has been out of work for years.

Should you despair over a relationship gone bad; Think of the person
who has never known what it’s like to love and be loved in return.

Should you grieve the passing of another weekend; Think of the woman in dire straits, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week to feed her children.

Should your car break down, leaving you miles away from assistance; Think of the paraplegic who would love the opportunity to take that walk.

Should you notice a new gray hair in the mirror; Think of the cancer
patient in chemo who wishes she had hair to examine.

Should you find yourself at a loss and pondering what is life all
about, asking what is my purpose? Be thankful. There are those who didn’t live long enough to get the opportunity.

Should you find yourself the victim of other people’s bitterness,
ignorance, smallness or insecurities; Remember, things could be worse. You could be one of them!

Should you decide to send this to a friend; Thank you, you may have
touched their life in ways you will never know!

Now, you have a nice day,

God

.death.

Jesus said, “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”

Everybody jump around in the house of God! Hey, Hey!

Planetshakers was great…went for all the 3 days, though it was quite short and they kept singing the same songs (2 new ones), but it was great worship. the last night was best cos it was longer. and the queue was super long super early. i think they need a bigger place! haha… they liked the jumpin’ song a lot….haha…it’s more like rap cos the chorus has no tune…and the “Don’t pass me by” is pretty nice too. too bad i didn’t have time to attend the day conference.

well what holidays? as i’ve expected, the holidays passed in a twinkling of an eye. i thought i could do something to try to make time to do something, but guessed that I didn’t (again). hais. i didn’t really waste time, more like I didn’t have time to do everything. lots of work undone and lots of stuff not catched up yet. hais.sigh.-_-.when can I ever ever have the time?!

today rantx.com exceeded bandwidth due to takgiu. it’s quite amazing. i didn’t expect the file to gain so much traffic within such a short period of time. I moved the wmv file to rantx at 4pm and within a few hours it exceeded the bandwidth limit of rantx.com wow. well now someone has kindly hosted it at wirelessed.net/takgiu

Holidays?

been pretty busy so far…

monday I was doing C++ OOP programming assignment, managed to get the basic stuff at the end of the day but have not done exception handling.

tuesday I was in school with mr dominic chua and mr ng doing glopos. went through some mambo tutorials, integrated the glopos layout into mambo, and played with it, though it’s not fully completed yet. it was quite fun mamboing though =p mr chua was nice enough to treat pizzahut, and we had lunch over takgiu and killing truth. haha.

tuesday night we were all rushing thinkquest, doing some final changes to the site. kx and merle were nice enough to help us with the crappyfish chinese translation. we all slept pretty late. hais so deja vu. i think victor and I had enough of such competitions…from cyberfair 2001 all the way to sterling and now. haiyo…too many liao? so much so that we got tired of researching. though some were quite fulfilling. and i think quite a few experienced last minute late night works. what’s new? haha.

today was icomp session. we had a wrap-up of the orientation vcds, they did some quiz stuff, prepared for vicomp. me and victor decided to treat everyone lunch. it was supposed to be a surprise. lunchtime they were about to go out. i told them to go canteen and eat, but they were like ‘dots, canteen’? haha. but on the way they saw me carrying pizza so i guess they were relieved. 6 canadian XL pizzas for about 20 people is just nice, everyone had enough share, and there was 2 free drinks too.

after that we watched some films such as ah ma, and tak giu. prepared v23 for vicomp………taught them some stuff before we left.

and so half the holidays are gone. tmr and friday i have work attachment at Part 1, the company which designed VJC’s VIP Hub and Concourse and such, in the afternoons. it’d be interesting…hmm…and i’m going to planetshakers in the nights. so my last two weekdays of the week are gone too. hais.

when am i going to find time to truly relax and find time to catch up with work?…

Birthday

Oh well, today is the day…

Went to school, arranged with greg to use his laptop for sea carnival video since he’s doing foty finals. quek shi wei and ming jie won. ha. well sea carnival video was not bad too, though it was disruptive to lessons again.

ah during break saw daryl’s class singing bday song for him. haa..i shook his hand and we both said: happy birthday to u, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to everyone… =p

anyway, my class gave me a surprise. i thought nothing much will happen today. i was eating my lunch, i heard jin talking to yeow that I “already know”. Know what? hmm got something for me? Then later while I was eating, a cake came in with a candle and a song. they sang a few times. not good enough so they sang again. I asked ngee leng to help me take pic. lol. haha. n so i cut the cake. speech speech! haah I’m so touched by the surprise. they have me a little gift, a prayer book from life bookshop. cool. and so the fruity cake was enjoyed by everyone else.

Later I asked shu yar, ngee leng, yeow may and gang why I have cake, cos mat was saying how come other people’s birthday no cake, I got cake (True true, i’m very touched and surprised by that). They say cos I’m the man behind the camera (cos i gave them friendship day namecard-sized photos and signed with that)….haaha…I’m so touched….thank you 04S64.

later saw another bday celebration in the canteen also. wah got 3 ppl bday today ah.

well anyway the rest of the day was quite normal and borin’. practically the whole school is folding cranes, in exchange for one bowl of rice to be donated to less fortunate, and thus I was learning how to fold one from weeds during lecture. haha. quite cheem. I got inspired to print a square of vjc logos during the 45 min I have to spare after lessons, and folded a vjc crane. cool. haha…

45 min after lesson, I’ve to board the minivan to SVA ceremony at ngee ann poly. nice cool big place. saw mr. you and aaron and some other VS people…didn’t expect to see ’em there…and aaron looks so different from the last time I saw him…so many years ago and now he’s sec 4 already. wow.

we were given big stars and small stars. hoosy’s grp had big stars, means they winning big prize, while mine small star only. in the end, we got merit award, while hoosy got…*drumroll* platinium! Wow….kudos to their wonderful achievement! merit got $200 carrefour voucher, while platinium got $1000 carrefour voucher, canon videocam, pinnacle softwares, graphics photo library and stuff. and they also won best actress (a sister of one of the crew), and best original score. wow 3 awards. pro sia……well at least my team won merit too. so quadruple achievement for vjc!

after that, took the minivan back to school. rushed down to indoor stadium in a cab. super long queue for benny hinn’s conference. wow…much more worse than hillsong. it took so long for me to queue from the bottom to the top. the queue stretched all the way to the main road where I alighted. And at abt 8pm, we were rejected entry, even though Jere had seats for me, and so I left reluctantly, while there were some others still standing at the gate, not giving up. haha…

I didn’t exactly know what to do, so I decided to walk around, walked to bus stop, took bus to dhoby ghaut, grabbed a bite at mc’s, decided to sit and surf net and chat. haha…didn’t want to go home so early. besides it’s my birthday. so boring. if only there were friends ard with me and we can go out or something. well it got late and I just took the NEL home.

And so that’s all for my birthday.

Thanks to all who have wished me. thanks to all who have gave me presents, esp 04S64, kx, yt, icomp, jingyi, mini who apparently gave me an interesting roll of film, and everyone else who remembered my birthday.

Thank you God for all my wonderful friends, bless them. Thank you God for your blessings and for my 18th year, I commit all into Your hands.

My Birthday a day earlier

Today seemed too much like my birthday…

this morning was a busy morning. went to V26 with some juniors to carry two boxes of freshly produced orientation VCDs to the hall for distribution. after the sterling annoucement in which mx and i spoke, i announced for ct reps to come collect the VCDs at the front after assembly.

and so after assembly, many people crowded around two boxes. icomp members helped to find the bundle of VCDs for each respective class, and it was quite chaotic and messy. meanwhile, i trust that everyone is doing ok and that everyone can find their VCDs….i was taking some picx the process…history in the making mah…there were also some last minute extra orders that we had to entertain, causing us to have no more extras left! aiy…wow at least we had a successful sale after all. 😀 finally my dream project is achieved and completed, though with a few hiccups of distribution errors due to sorting and typo errors.

after that, i was about to ask some of them who wanted to order extra to follow us back to V26. i asked some of the juniors to pack the remaining uncollected VCDs into the boxes to carry back to V26.
(but apparently, they seem unwilling to bring back the boxes. so i was almost pissed off by that that i almost wanted to carry myself…this added to something that happens on later….). then, i was trying to entertain a few last min orders, so i was like asking them to follow ask back to v26, then i was like walking off thinking that everyone will pack and go…

and who knows that at this very moment, kx grabbed me by my throat (choking me in other words…), and dragged me back for “no apparent reason”. at first i was wondering what he was doing. then i realised that they are doing something to me, relating to my birthday. I shouted, “but today is NOT my birthday!!!” and then before I knew it, the people surrounding me started to sing Happy Birthday. My mind was in a daze, fuzzied and confused. “huh? now? no? i’m going back to v26? no? today is not my birthday? it’s tmr? why now? huhuh?” My mind was with the orientation VCDs, not celebrating my birthday a day earlier! and yt came along with a little cake and a candle on it. before I knew what to do, I was asked to blow the candle. I was thinking whether to make a wish or not or say a little prayer. But instead I said, “But today is not my birthday!”. “Doesn’t matter whether it’s your birthday or not la, just blow the candle!” So I blew the candle, looking reluctant/blur/…

well after the singing was over, we went back to v26, with the PE teachers and others around including SC and others who waiting for orders onlooking, probably shocked at a birthday song in front of the hall. well anyway, i went back to v26, kept the stuff, entertain some last orders and went to econs lecture unclam, hot and sweaty. i was still feeling surprised, shocked, dazed whatever.

later I was like msging kx via yt “thanks for the surprise, but it was at the wrong timing, wrong day and wrong place. I appreciate the idea but it does not help when the situation is chaotic and i’m not in the right mood. thanks kx. once again, kx has proved to be kx. and once again, my birthday is tmr >

Sterling and PEARLS scrapped and full-day

On Tuesday evening, me, mx, vic, mr boy, terence, jonathan went on two cabs to Nassim Road…the official residence of the British High Commissioner for Sterling Group Reception. It was an old colonial building…100+ years old…very interesting.

anyway the reception was just a standing one with finger food and drinks being served by waitresses. the finger food was quite interesting, cos they were not the usual kind…more of delicacies, like mini-bite-sized-pizza etc. anyway after some mingling ard with the sterling lecturers from the various british universities, some of whom asked if we are going to win again, they announced the results.

we sort of anticipated that we are winning cos mr chad goh led the cat out of the bag earlier to min xuan this morning. learnt from mr boy later that the sterling people called to say our attendance is compulsory, so means we won something, just duno whether it’s my team or the other team. somehow or rather, mx, vic and i were rather optimistic. so we were waiting for our team name MEVC to be announced in eagerness, sorta prepared ourselves mentally and physically by finding somewhere to put our bags…and thus we make history by winning the Sterling competition for the 3rd consecutive year running! yay. well we got a trophy, challenge shield, and 1000 pounds, of which S$1.5 to be divided amongst 4 of us.

after the prize giving, the high commissioner spoke, and the CEO i/c of london2012 spoke, and thenall of us got to watch 2 cool dvd commercials of london 2012, and thus psychoing us to support them as a candidate city for the XXXth olympics. haha i think we really absorbed the propaganda.

after that it was walk down the long wealthy stretch of Nassim Road in which almost every car passed was a MERC, well and we went home, happy.

(oh i forgot to mention that we saw Pari who’s now in st. andrew’s. heh. i remember mr gi asking me about his appeal to vjc last year)

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anyway yesterday, the minister for education announced that PEARLS and compulsory CIP hours will be scrapped from 2007 for university admission. hais. means it’d not affect my batch. aiyoh. how interesting….another system which was up a few years back, caused everyone – students and teachers included – much worry and much time, and then now scrapped. just another feature of the ministry of education.

actually it’s quite rationale…hope that people will stop doing things for the sake of PEARLS points, and hope that it will also not make people passive in CCA. now finally we don’t need to go and purposely fill up the different aspects of PEARLS esp things such as CIP, which people do just for the sake of fulfilling the requirement. So what if u do 80 hours of CIP in two years? ….

nothing is ideal. and so is system or no system. but what really matters is your passion in whatever you do, which is measured by the fruits of your labour.

regarding this matter, mr dominic chua and mr ho selected 10 J2 students for the press to choose to interview, i was one of them, but in the end the press wanted a J1 and hence didn’t interview any of the 10. hmm i heard mr chua wrote something pretty lengthy for me…

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An interesting quote: “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you don’t care who gets the credit.”

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I forgot to talk about the full day on monday. well monday was declared a holiday thanks to the 2nd best A level results in VJC history. however the mass dance response was lousy, and so was the cheers. only 2 dances, and then everyone chaoz. no VS people cheering. so sad :S…haix….and so, I’ve to stay back in V26 to finish up the orientation VCD export, stupid Premiere kept crashing and crashing…aiyoh. Well since other people have training, I cannot do iCOMP stuff meh? haha….jr yt mf went to skate. they kindly bought lunch for me back to sch (yes I was in school until 2PM), and later we, and josh and vic went to play pool in orchard. we reached there at abt 3.30PM, and it almost feel like any other school day, was almost dozing off on the bus, quite tired. anyway pool was fun, havn’t been playing for a loonng time…didn’t really play much.

vic had extra free movie tickets, so I volunteered to replace zhan who could not make it. and we watched robots, an animation by creators of ice age, in a theatre filled with children of all ages and adults of all ages. wow. it was funny and hilarious, vic laughed so loud. haha. it was quite corny, graphics were not bad. “Ladies and gentlebots…”

and so that was how the full day was spent, albeit half of it was in school.

approx 200 orientation vcds were produced and sold successfully