siao liao siao liao. this sem confirm die. today i walked out of 4241 lecture with best fren to join bx jac and hw for lunch. i hate 4241. and lousy lecturers like feng si shen. got mike dowan to use. he holds his bloody mike facing the air. like 30 cm away from his face. WHAT'S THE POINT OF HAVING A MIKE? anyway, what he says is crap so there's no point listening to it either.

then there's 4238 which, despite having shens and muggers like qiurong, zhiwen and hw in my group, we still got 63/100 for our project. when the average is 71.

and my fyp is still pretty much unstarted.

why is this happening ...

things are totally not going the way i want. game over, game over. what can you do when circumstances purposely happen like that right. the brothers can be so totally frontstabby (as opposed to backstabby) sometimes, ARGH. haha but it's still a game, nothing to get so pissed over. yet.

yesterday was a free day, in every sense of the word.

firstly, it was a "free day", because i didn't have to come to school. or rather i was supposed to, but suresh the postgrad (aka "the one with an indian god for a desktop wallpaper") never replied my sms so i didn't go for fyp.

secondly it was a "free" day because we didn't spend any money. met mok with yt to pass him his birthday present (sunglasses!) and then watch a play in school after that. the original plan was to meet in town for a movie and dinner. well the play was FREE and we didn't have dinner, so we didn't really spend any money at all!

and then mok refused to wear his sunglasses to take a photo because:

1. it is guailan to wear sunglasses in dimly lighted areas
2. his unsavoury frens will jump on him and kill him until he dies

fortunately his frens were merciful enough to let him put on the sunglasses at the bus stop right before we left so that we could take a photo, taking turns to wear sunglasses at 10pm :)

unfortunately the photos are with yt, so he may have a few days more to live.

on a totally unrelated issue, WAR TIME WOOT!

4241 tutorials just get worse every 2 weeks, dammit. the first tutorial was about cylindrical flux. now it's spherical!? ok but that's the EASIEST part of the tutorial. the solution to the next question is like 5 pages long.

prof feng says that "it's ok to take 3-4 hours to finish the tutorial. but if you take one whole day, you should brush up on your knowledge." KAO YOU GIVE ME MY ENTIRE LIFE TO DO I ALSO CANNOT DO LOR.

what's worse, there are actually people who volunteer to go up to the board and write solutions. C for Chui la. actually i think C is very good already. more likely it's D for Die la.

BUT: i have a hold of loh jie's senior's solutions!! yay! i dunno why he passed them to me but ITS MINE NOW muahaha! i better not scan them and send out soft copies because we three idiots (junyi jinghan and me) are all fighting for Cs among the Ds. better step on all the stones i can!!

ok, found out something not lovely at all!!! when my printer prints duplex it does not use any black ink at all. even when printing in grayscale, it uses COLOUR ink to print "gray" or "black" (which is still gray .. zzz). WTH!!!

i contacted canon support, and they very promptly called me (not bad, their service support) and said there's no way around it. and that it prints in color ink to USE LESS INK (?!?!) so it won't seep through the paper. and they have sent feedback to their (stupid) engineers in canon japan to hopefully develop a new printer that uses black ink in duplex mode.

now how stupid is this? what is the bloody point of developing an automatic duplex function that nobody can print black text with?

at the very least, in single page mode grayscale is printed in black pigment ink. so i'll still have to manually duplex my notes. which i have been doing since forever, but at least i didn't have to pay for a function that i can't use.

lovely photos still though. love is complicated .. gotta love the house plus the crows lor.

ah, i love my new canon printer!

i thought i'd be pretty happy with my brother printer (free with my laptop), but the ink's a killer ($80) and the ink starts streaking if you haven't used it in a while. so i got this delicious beauty at $169. yeah i know, price is a little steep. and surprisingly, it's BIGGER than my brother all in one. and it's just a printer! i think maybe it's because of the auto duplexing. seriously, AUTO DUPLEX. love, love and love.

but anyway it's damn fast, and it prints beautiful photos despite not being a photo printer. a 4R shot takes TEN SECONDS on standard mode and about 30 seconds in best mode.

the default printer profile results in passable, but somewhat washed out and yellowish photos. if you want a real fast tweaking, go to printer properties. make sure your paper type, quality and size are all correct, then go to Colour/Intensity, click Manual and then Set.

under Set, there's Colour Management, choose ICM. below, increase green by 2-4 points (click the left slider button 2-4 times). increase intensity by 10 points and contrast by 2-4 points. save the profile under the Profiles tab so you don't have to redo the whole process.

bravo! instant niceness.

for more wow: open the photo in photoshop (i'm using cs2 here). under Edit -> Colour Settings, for Working Spaces - RGB choose Adobe RGB 1998 (you must have this installed, it comes with the canon printer cd). under Colour Management Policies - RGB choose Convert to Working RGB. check all 3 boxes.

Edit -> Assign Profile, choose Adobe RGB 1998 for the profile.

Image -> Image Size. uncheck Resample Image, then enter in the actual printed size of the image (4x6 inches for 4R). do not enter an actual pixel resolution, photoshop will calculate and resolve it automatically.

SHARPEN THE IMAGE AT 25%!! under Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen, choose Remove: Lens Blur. reduce the preview image to 25% zoom, and sharpen from there. (i used a 30-35% sharpen) the image looks like crap in 100% zoom but it looks really good when printed out, trust me. although you might want to duplicate the layer and then do layer masking for areas like skin (to remove noise caused by sharpening).

to print, choose Print With Preview. to mostly idiotproof your print. you can check that your photo is printing the right way (i.e. not in portrait mode for a landscape picture, this happened to me before, gah.) and choose your print profile.

PRINT! i recommend the top tray for photo printing, the photo paper won't be bent by the printer rollers. although the photos do show a few somewhat noticeable trails of dots. probably caused by the impressions of the rollers. there are like 8 of them.

anyway, setting up your own print profile really makes a difference. you can try printing the same photo with and without the profile, it's amazing.

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and that's USD some more.

this is so totally sad :((

this horrifying fact has finally been drummed into my head by my first CN4241 tutorial. now that i come to think about it it's not very hard, but when i first saw it i was like shit ... fick's law, diffusion equations, flux, cylindrical coordinates, I FORGOT EVERYTHING. and i can't even do integration with integrating factor.

i am in deep deep shit. i was so stunned during the tutorial i didn't even feel like copying the (unintelligible) solution down. good thing jinghan lent me his tut after that. and i think he's also going to get a soft copy of senior's tuts from loh jie. what would i do if i didn't have any friends in chem eng man. i'd die like a sick turtle.

ho, speaking of loh jie i think his name is quite funny. in army the first name is abbreviated, leaving only the surname .. so .. you guessed it, his nametag was J LOH. cool man, i have jennifer lohpez in my drug delivery group.

came across this kingdom in utopia (i know, who the heck still plays this game anymore .. well it's me! and all the students in sweden, holland etc).

each line is the name of a province (25 provinces in all)

They ask
me where
I've been
and what
I've done
and seen
But what
can I reply
Who knows
It wasn't I
But someone
Just like me
Who went
across the
sea
And with
my head
and hands
Killed men in
foreign lands
Though I
must bear
the Blame
because he
bore my Name.

let me add a disclaimer: THAT YOU NEED TO PAY FOR.

case in point: this pretty cool panoramic view from the eiffel tower.

actually this goes for all tall buildings that charge for ascension (usually through superfast recordbreaking lifts which are added to somehow justify charging exorbitant prices for something that should be free). this includes the eiffel tower, taiwan 101, the sydney tower, etc .. basically ANYTHING CALLED TOWER.

i remember jinyao scolding me for not going up the eiffel tower, despite passing it by like er, almost everyday i was in paris. my mom offers this pearl of wisdom: everything looks the same up there as down here. i disagree. just looking at that panoramic view from the eiffel tower, what do you see? other than the river seine and place du trocadero (which look way better from the ground actually) paris just looks like any other boring city. which it is not. there's so much beautiful, intricate architecture which you obviously cannot see from 200 metres in the air. and you even have to pay for it!

i speak from experience okay. i've gone up taiwan 101 and the sydney tower .. basically the taller the tower is, the grayer and more generic everything looks, and the more you pay. so just don't go up.

i just emailed my fyp prof to ask him some stuff. just. like 1.15 am. and then 5 minutes later he replied me. can anyone say wow? every prof should be like him man. answer student queries whenever and wherever. if not why are we paying 6k a year?!

more funny stuff: ah beng version of martin luther king's speech! ok la, that blog's actually a celeb gossip blog, but one of his posts has the speech, if it's not the first post then just scroll down. the end's particularly funny, what with the NABEH appearing after every paragraph.

jinyao and jinghan came up with a sample conversation applicable for use in all japanese restaurants serving steamboat:

waitress: "irrashaimase!"
jy: "KANINABE" (crab steamboat)
waitress: "hai!
jh: "NINABE" (two steamboats)

seriously, lol. i don't want to go to japan with them ever ....

wow school is super pointless! i'm doing fyp, genes and soc, and 2 chem eng electives. 18 mc in total. while that in itself already sounds very slack, our genes lecturer seems to have escaped the country, because our first lecture has been delayed to the 14th of feb. in effect, that means i only have to come to school for 2 hours everyday. in keeping with my lazy defeatist attitude, I MIGHT AS WELL NOT COME TO SCHOOL ANYMORE!!!

anyway, saw this in church:

the power of attraction calls from afar

and ends with a silent kiss!

apparently someone behind the grey car wanted to get out of a really tight squeeze in the carpark. still i don't see why it justifies having to kiss numberplates. especially when the person who repositioned the car was the owner of neither car. i remember my mom got into a little bit of trouble when she was doing exactly the same thing :)

this has got to be one of my worst bidding rounds ever. being unable to decide on what modules to take this sem, i dithered around, and hence didn't bid at all during round 1a.

then i asked jinghan what he bidded on and he said cn4241 and lsm3402b. and he spent 1 point on each the prev round. VERY GOOD! so i put 1 point on each. in the end, i got lsm for 1 pt and i got outbidded for 4241 (min 150).

ok nvm, its round 2a and there are only 3 vacancies?! but this time i put my max of 2092, which is all i'm willing to pay before i go straight to appeals. gek1002, intro to jap studies is also available for bidding. i only need this last module to clear, so all i need to do is show hand right? WRONG!!! driven by some insane need to conserve points for future cap-pulling modules, i put 150.

results: did not get either module. min bid for jap studies was only 331 points!!! made a resolution to SHOW HAND tomorrow for jap studies.

round 2b: jap studies unavailable this round ZZZZ. but wait, there's still 3 open slots for 4241! i try to play smart and put in my bid of 1 point. to keep the market calm!

round 2b closed bidding: suddenly there're now 4 bidders and 3 slots. and now because we can't see each other's bids the typical chem eng kiaseeness begins to play on everyone's minds. i put in 2002 points for 4241.

results: i've finally managed to get 4241, but at what heavy cost!! i paid 2002 points to secure my place in this previously unwanted module :( and yes, I WAS THE MINIMUM SUCCESSFUL BID.

seriously, i don't know why they give us so many points each sem in our program account. maybe the profs get high seeing their module bids soar into the thousands. or maybe they think that we'll have fun trashing the yr 1s for their fna1002x module. the minute they try to bid the minimum bid goes to 1000+. HAHA! i think that actually does sound fun. maybe i'll try that in my final semester ...

found this while cleaning up my drawers:

i think it was drawn by cockle. if you don't know what this is, you obviously are not from tjc.

i'm finally back from japan and my church's youth camp and i'm horrified to discover that CRAP, there's no time left! everyday there's something to do: prepare for christmas, prepare for dad's bday, prepare for new year, shopshopshop, cleancleanclean, etc.

how terrible! can't i just have a day where there's nothing to do? and eat and sleep all day long?! is that too much to ask for?? probably, dammit.

anyway, tokyo was lovely! and much too short, only spent 5 disjointed winter days (i.e. sky gets dark at 4pm) there. i'm DEFINITELY returning, but it looks like it's not gonna be with uni frens anymore cos no one wants to spend more than 1k on a holiday it seems. and i dunno if i can jio anyone else to go in the near future cos everyone seems to be gg tokyo this year. ohh sarah! shane! doushite?!?! :(

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