school is almost starting again

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My bad for the no-update. I’m currently enjoying the last few days of winter break. Come Tuesday it’ll be back to being a chao mugger. I already received some not too good news regarding one of the subjects I’m taking – ADV410. Prof Olsen emailed to “warn” us of the schedule which includes lots of presentations and projects. “Presentation” – I cringe when I see that word. My first reaction was to check whether MS317 is still available. No such luck. Ok, I’m stuck with this. Well, although ADV410 is just one of the courses I can take to fulfill the 5 required, I should think the material presented will be useful in the long-run.

I’m kinda lazy picking out nice photos for my blog, so just check out my Facebook page ok. I uploaded most of the photos from the winter trip. The ones in Las Vegas are not up yet.  It was an ok trip. I got to fulfill one of my wishes which is to see an aurora. Yay! Don’t think I’ll ever go back to Alaska. It is unimaginably COLD. 40 to 60 degrees below.

Speaking of cold, the heater in my apartment isn’t working too good again. I hate Ramshaw. I’m so glad that I’m moving out of this place in the following semester. :angry:

PS: I have good mind to yank open my window and cut off that stupid branch that keeps scratching on my window. :angry:

fall 2008 results

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I tried for 4.0, got close, but still failed. *sigh* On a brighter note, I’ll be on Dean’s List again. 🙂

ATMS100 – A
EALC305 – A-
ECON103 – A+
JAPN201 – A+
MATH161 (same as STAT100) – A+

Total GPA = 3.94
Cumulative GPA = 3.69

PS: I ate a rather expensive dinner of crab and fish today, but I don’t care. It’s my Christmas present for myself and the best thing that has happened so far for the Winter break. If you didn’t know, I was feeling upset all along since our flight got cancelled on the first day of our trip.

no more 4.0

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I just sealed my fate. No more GPA 4.0 for this semester. I haven’t gotten that before, but am trying very very hard to reach it.

Well, my Japanese Literature Prof made an irresistable offer which was the choice to take the final exam. If we were happy with our current grade from all the activities so far, we could be excused from taking the exam. As always, I’m like an inch away from the next grade – I got A-. At first, Deary urged me to take the final exam coz “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” But, I did some calculations of my own and realised the only way my grade could move up to an A would be to score at least 96/100. Quite impossible for me in my opinion. I’ve been doing ok in the quizzes, but the free response quizzes and papers, I’ve only been able to get around 85%. Moreover, the format of the paper has 2 essay questions. I can only imagine myself getting around 90/100 at the max. So, techinically, my grade would not change and might only drop down to a B+.

I tried pushing my luck and asking if there was anything else I could do, but Prof said there was nothing. So, I opted to be excused for the exam. *sigh* Oh well, at least that gives me time to study for Meteorology and Econs. Just hope I don’t screw up anything else and manage to get into Dean’s List again. The fortune cookie had better be right that luck is coming my way.

Ah well, as always, can only blame myself for not opening my mouth more often in class.

third best

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Deary and I had both gotten perfect scores for our Macroecons essays, so did quite a few others. However, I was quite sure that Deary would make it among the best 15 when Prof Baer read out the names. The 15 essays were made up of the 3 best essays from each TA’s sections. I was jokingly announcing Deary’s name for best essay.

Then, Prof Baer called out my name. EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… Ok, never mind. I didn’t think I would make it for the best essay award anyway. Prof opens envelope for third best essay and announces my name. WHAT?! This is unbelievable. I don’t even think my essay was good. Everyone knows I know nuts about the economy coz I don’t read the newspapers. Last semester, I even dropped COMM264 coz it focused on the economy and I didn’t even know what was GDP. I was whining to Mum about it and all she said was it’s high time that I flipped through the newspapers. I even failed my Microecons essay! (Ok, that was coz I didn’t prepare much for it.)

But, it’s not like I put in tons of effort on this paper. All I did was to use the concepts I’ve learnt in the class to comment on the article. Like why certain countries are using monetary policies and are reluctant to use fiscal policies although they have been urged to use fiscal policies. I used the pros and cons of monetary policies and fiscal policies to explain that. Not as if I plunged into some profound explanation and used examples of well-known company X or Y in the essay.

I’m not trying to be modest. I really know nuts about Econs. Half the time I have to ask Deary to explain certain things and he can practically rattle off all the Econs stuff. He can link A to B in Economic terms and I’m like “Whatever manz, as long as gahmen (government) give me money, I am happy. No money, not happy.”

So, what’s the prize?

A book. DUH. What kind of book? Something that I never ever read. Well, unless I have no reading material when I’m doing the big one and this happens to be the closest thing to me. Ok, maybe for the sake of ECON103 and for the good people who think my essay was worthy of third prize, I will read it. No promises though.

By the way, Deary deserves some credit too. He helped me pick out some articles and I chose the one I wanted among those to write on. Maybe I claimed the winning article. Maybe if he had used that article, he would have gotten ‘Best Essay’ instead. *shrugs*

momo monsters eat lamb chops

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It all began with me asking deary which state has the abbreviation ‘MO’. Missouri right? Deary was trying to be funny; he said “momo”. He then asked me, “Momo is something right?” I said, “Yea, peach.” I told him momo reminded me of Momo monsters and our Primary school penmanship exercises. I think it was in Primary 2 that Momo monsters made their debut…

“Momo monsters eat lamb chops, eat lamb chops, eat lamb chops. Momo monsters drink hot tea, drink hot tea, drink hot tea.” :woot: It never fails to crack me up.

We were trying to recall the animal for each level. Primary 1 was a squirrel, Primary 2 was a mouse, Primary 5 was a bird…I couldn’t really recall the rest. Thus, the search on the internet began and I found this. OMG…that is SO DAMN OLD SCHOOL! Ermz, I don’t think Sis used that textbook. I remember hers had an awful black and white picture on the cover with a striped background. The pages of her textbook felt like cheap paper (like how cheap toilet paper feels and smells). Using correction fluid (aka liquid paper) was forbidden then and she had to use an ink eraser to erase mistakes which would probably take off the layers of fiber in the paper and make a hole. Oh, and the characters in her book were Mr Wolly and Mr Yaki! :woot:

Anyway, we noticed the textbook in the picture was by CDIS (Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore). That certainly brought back memories. Remember the time when we watched Science programs by CDIS? Back then, the teacher would bring in VHS tapes which were probably watched and rewound a million times, so the sound would be a bit off. Oh, and that oh-so-familiar tune when the CDIS logo appeared at the beginning. I remember some of the CDIS programs were shown on certain Saturdays too.

I wonder which year they stopped using PETS…

polite form, plain form

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Switching from polite form to plain form and back again is confusing. However, I finally totally understand what Per said years ago. Like “どこにいるの?” and “おまえ、くるぞ!” I mean, I understood before that the former was asking where I am, but I didn’t really understand the context of the question.

でも、私は頑張ります!

PS: I hate going through registration every semester. It always makes me sad and panicky coz my time ticket is always later and the classes I really want end up full. I hate having to FIGHT for my classes. Maybe when I become a Junior, I will have less problems. Ok, that’s one more semester to go…

cosplay and lolita

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I think I’m just…old. Parties are just not for me. Hmmm…or maybe it depends on the company. SSA had their Halloween party last night at Yongji’s one-bedroom apartment. I have to stress that it was a one-bedroom apartment coz the number of people in there was…IMPOSSIBLE. While everyone was so freakin’ high, KS and I were just relaxing at one corner on the sofa. I sort of vowed to take more photos this time round since I was in a full proper lolita dress, but I just couldn’t bring myself to have that mood. It started out pretty ok, but then later, half the time I was trying hard not to get my toes being stepped on. Worse, some bugger started emptying the jack-o-lantern buckets filled with candy and throwing the candy. At that point, I totally wasn’t enjoying myself. Besides, most of the drinks there were alcohol. KS had to help himself with a can of 7-Up in the fridge. I don’t think anyone was really drunk at that point, but most of them were high, crazed, and were pretty much acting drunk and TOTALLY ANNOYING. :angry:

It’s not like I can’t get high. I have had some really fun moments with 7ners where we do crazy things together and get all high. They drink too, but the difference is they DON’T act drunk and stupid. Anyway, that’s not the point of the entry. So much for thinking I could get a pretty decent shot of myself in my lolita outfit and possibly send it to the USA version of Gothic & Lolita Bible. I think the best costumes at the party were Lin Yan’s and Zhan Fan’s. Lin Yan cosplayed as Evil Alice, though I think the dress was not totally correct? Evil Alice has puffy sleeves to her dress. Zhan Fan got a Ghostbuster’s suit complete with an inflatable backpack-machine-thing. So cute! If I ever tried cosplay, I would want to cosplay Evil Alice or Shinku (Rozen Maiden). Maybe Suigintou (Rozen Maiden) wouldn’t be a bad idea too. But, like I told Shine, it’s no point cosplaying if you don’t really sew/make your own costumes.

Anyway, earlier in the day, I wore my lolita outfit to class. Ki-san wore hers – she was a hot librarian. She told me she saw this row of guys as Spongebob Squarepants in one of her classes and they were taking their notes with crayon on paper. Hilarious!

I wonder if the helicopter flying around last night was meant as surveillance? Campus Police got alerted when someone found a note in the toilet saying that he (person who wrote the note) had damaged someone’s car window in Savoy and would shoot someone on Green Street on Halloween. In sensei’s words “I am not going to Green Street. I want to see November.” I guess most people would have stayed away from that area.

Last but not least, a photo of myself in my lolita outfit. Not the best shot, but at least it’s something. (I think I look fat. Ok, I AM fat.) Photo credit: Peiyi

present for me

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Ok, shall post up those long-awaited photos.

“Autumn is upon us once again…” This was what I had in mind when I saw the tree with its flaming leaves. (I think the tree is botak now.)

 

My room at Stoughton St.

Deary had a surprise for me yesterday. There were 2 parcels from Amazon waiting for me to open them. I knew one of them was the magazines I ordered, but I wondered whether the other huge box was Shine’s since I asked him to get my stuff for me using his free trial of Amazon Prime. Yea, we’re all making use of the free 2-day shipping by signing up for a one-month free trial of Amazon Prime. I contemplated opening it for a long time. Well, it was addressed to me, but just in case it isn’t mine… Ah, heck, I’ll open it since deary did leave a note saying “SURPRISE!” TADAA! Klipsch Groove PM20 speakers! So, they are supposed to be my advanced Christmas present (and possibly next birthday present). Thanks deary! :love:

Recently, I received an email about Fujitsu’s new products. THEY HAVE A NEW LAPTOP WHICH COMES IN PINK! Why didn’t they have that earlier?! It’s the Fujitsu L1010.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Got my lolita dress ready. Ki-san asked me whether I’m going to wear it to class. I said if she did wear something, I’ll wear it. Thus, we both agreed to dress-up for class. SSA is going to have a party at Yongji’s apartment at night. I guess most of us will be avoiding Green Street since campus police sent out an alert coz they found a note saying that someone will be shot on Halloween night on Green Street. Whether it’s a prank or not, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Last, but not least…check this out. Do you see my name? Do you? Do you? Hahaha…

a little update for now

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Wah lau…class is cancelled for today. o_O And I stayed up to read 3 chapters of “Tales of The Heike” just to be prepared for class. Ok, what am I talking, I should be prepared for class. If you think it’s some boring history shit, it’s not. It’s mildly entertaining, reading about monks gone bad, people who spontaneously combust because of bad karma, and a whole lot of decapitating. Haha, that was just my humourous interpretation of the text. It’s really about Japanese history – the Genji and Heike. Now, I just wonder why they keep preaching about Buddha and attaining enlightenment when the next moment they are at war and chopping of people’s heads. How is following the Way? It’s so funny when you read about someone (who has taken the tonsure) killing an enemy and then he goes back in, changes out of his bloodied gear and into a clean white monk’s robe. Like HUH?

I got back my Econs mid-term. Hahaha, I got 95/100. I think my TA is a easy grader coz I really feel I don’t deserve that high a grade. The most dulan part is that I lost 5 marks coz I made a calculation error. I forgot that the income multiplier is 1/1-MPC. I already had the MPC calculated in the first part of the question and I happily copied that as the income multiplier for the part where I had to calculate government spending during inflation. So…*kwa kwa kwa* wrong. I KNEW HOW TO DO THAT QUESTION OK. As in, I knew the formula for calculating government expenditure, just that I plugged in the wrong value.

I only hope my second Japanese exam would get full marks. I found the paper easier than the first. Less writing to do. Anyway, I have been sort of whining to sensei that Japanese is difficult. Just coz I went to one Japanese Table session and almost everyone was from the intermediate-advance classes and they could speak Japanese fluently. The biggest problem is I actually understand most of the conversation between a student and Sadler-sensei. Just that I can’t reply in Japanese. 🙁

I went to my first barcrawl (despite, having my Japanese exam the next day). Ok, I didn’t actually stay for the whole barcrawl. I left after Geovanti’s. And I made friends with the Japanese exchange students this semester. Note: Xuefang is a fellow Singaporean. Yohei is the president of J-Net. The rest are the exchange students. The barcrawl tee is obviously huge for me. The printing company made a mistake with the sizes so everyone had to upgrade a size. So for me, it was S to M. S is already a little big for me, what more M. Do note that I was freezing in the photo. I took off my pullover in Geovanti’s coz it was freakingly hot. Then when we left, I was too lazy to put it on again since we would be going to some place warm again. Only thing was that I decided to leave after the queue outside Legends was pretty long.

Have been obsessing over Lolita stuff lately. I discovered the fantastic use of the Google reader. So now I keep track of lolita livejournal communities there. I bought my first lolita brand dress from Metamorphose. It was on sale, so paid about USD90 only. Normally, brand dresses are about USD200-300. I also bought a second-hand Angelic Pretty dress + headdress from someone on the EGL sales community.

More for later…