What's next?

Just finished my final exam in NUS. Strangely I feel no sense of jubilation, nor exhilaration. Just a dull feeling of numbness haha.. 4 years flew by just like that, and suddenly all the mugging, complains about FYP etc don’t seem so important at all.

EC3333 Financial Economics. The exam was relatively easy, with 30 MCQs and 2 short answer questions. The MCQs were straightforward enough, and anyone who put in the effort to memorize the basic formulae shouldn’t have any problems with them. For one of the short answers, the answers to the later parts of the questions depended on the earlier parts, and after some discussion with bingde after the exam, I think I got the front part of the answer wrong, which means the rest of the answers would all be wrong if there’s no “error-carried-forward”. Sian. The fact that everyone probably scored near full marks for the CA portion of the module made it worse. It means that such minute errors can often lead to the difference in grades.

EE4509 Silicon Microsystems. The module comprises of 60% CA, which once again I believe majority of the class scored near full marks (with the ATs and ANs sharing answers amongst each other for every assignment). I myself scored 36 out of the 45% revealed to us, which I consider to be not a bad achievement considering I did the assignments myself. The exam was open-book, with only 2 questions. As with any other engine module, I just threw in the methods and calculations hoping that the final answer would turn out correct.

And so ends my life in NUS. Coming Monday I’ll be reporting back to the RSAF as a working adult. OMG working adult!!

A chapter closes. A chapter begins.

Meet-up

Met up with jiayang yesterday to go starbucks at orchard and mug. I remembered the last time I actually saw him was about a year ago, when we met around the same period of time to study for MNO1001 together. Yet despite the one year that we’ve not met up, I’m glad he was the exact same person I’ve come to know since sec 1.

We actually spent more time talking rather than studying hahaha. Plus we went to watch 3 Kingdoms after dinner. =P It’s quite a nice show, provided you’re not really picky about how close it follows the actual history.

Besides the catching up of how he’s been doing since the last time I met him, we talked about almost everything (which of cos included the gf topic and got me emo for awhile again hahaha), and we both reached a consensus that the Dunman High days were the happiest days of our studying lives so far. It was a period where I actually looked forward to going to school everyday.

Learning seemed so easy then, putting in minimal effort and still getting the desired grades. Sleeping during Ms Yee’s 3-period English lessons, going around classes to borrow the OHP, exchanging homework to copy every morning etc. Not to forget playing bball in the afternoon everyday without fail, rain or shine, or having our class relocated to the table-tennis room due to the construction of the hostel (and hence seizing every opportunity to play table-tennis, even with wooden planks) Then there’s the “eating competition” during recess where the slowest to finish had to clear all the plates. CCAs were fun, and chalets were always looked forward to. Of course, there’s so many other memorable incidents that it’s impossible to list them all out.

Ah, the good old days. =)

DAVID TAO CONCERT!!

I’ve been looking forward to the concert for several reasons. First of all, it marks the end of assignments, tests, FYP, and the start of the reading week. Secondly, after spending $171 on the tickets for the premium seats, I was having high expectations, even if it’s David Tao.

Met up with Bingde, Rayner, Chunwei and his friend at KLP for dinner before proceeding to the indoor stadium for the much anticipated David Tao concert. Was actually struck by a sense of familiarity as I remembered attending his concert 2 years ago for the first time. Same place, same timing, with almost the same people, and the same sense of anticipation.

The décor on the stage was simple, unlike the “tropical rainforest” theme 2 years back. Not that I really care, I’m here for the music rather than the aesthetics. As people are still making their way in, we had to wait for quite awhile before the concert finally began. And boy, what a show!

First song up was one of my all-time favorites, the “yes no song” from his first album. Was pleasantly surprised by the arrangement he made to the music. This was followed by the concert “must-have”s like 飞机场的1030，鬼，讨厌红楼梦，黑色柳丁 and many more! Compared to the concert 2 years ago, I would think that David was on tip-top condition yesterday, effortlessly flaunting his range and vocal techniques. Totally mesmerizing.

I particularly loved how he re-arranged 忘不了，月亮代表谁的心. It’s amazing how the entire feel of the song can be changed depending on how he sang it. One moment he was having us rocking with him with songs like “鬼” and “小镇姑娘”, and the very next moment you can almost feel the sadness when he belted out songs like “天天” and “爱我还是他”. It was literally a roller-coaster ride of emotions.

Best songs of the night had to be 爱我还是他 and 太美丽. They were so perfect you almost had to remind yourself that he’s singing them live! The dance medley also had almost everyone in the stadium up on their feet and dancing to the beat.

Despite taking out quite a number of songs from his routine such as 流沙 and 二十二, and the lack of newer songs like 无缘, 自导自演的悲剧 and 不爱 (which we were really wishing to hear) I enjoyed every minute of his performance. Perhaps my vocab is too limited, but I feel words can’t really bring out the power of his voice, the atmosphere, nor how we felt. It was that good. Seriously.

If I really wanted to be picky, the only flaw would be perhaps the dancers, who added no value to the show besides allowing David to rest. =P

I was reminded of why I liked David Tao and his music in the first place. He’s not exactly handsome, there’s no fancy costumes, and there’s no spectacular visual effects. Yet the raw power of his music and voice really captures the heart. Absolutely fantastic.

It was worth every cent of the ticket. =D

Pep talk for myself

A realization hit me today. Looking at my previous blog posts, I noticed that most were inclined towards complaining about life, about school, about things that’s not gonna change even if I keep complaining about them.

It’s actually all about the mindset.

When you are assigned a task, you can choose to either complete it with a positive attitude and take pride in your end product, or you can choose to complain about how troublesome it is and end have producing work that you know is not up to your own standards. It’s all in the mind. If you really look forward to doing something and accomplishing it, you don’t find it a chore and at the same time you can probably do a good job.

Perhaps all these years of studying has rendered me numb when accepting new things. Learning and studies, as corny as it may sound, should be about the discovery of new knowledge. When a lecturer says something in lecture, we should be going “wow I didn’t noe that!” instead of “omgwtf is he talking about... boring~~” I’ve kinda lost the drive to learn, and although I know its abit late for me to finally realize this today, I’m glad I still managed to do so before the exams.

So to everyone out there, regardless of whether you understand what I’m blabbering about, stay positive and work hard! =)

busy

I’ve kinda lost track of time these 2 weeks, being buried under FYP. Going to the lab almost every day, it resembles a feeling of déjà vu. The same timing, same bus, same people, same circuit. It’s almost like a recurring nightmare.

I’m really glad that I started work on my thesis early, cos the past few days had been really hectic. Torn between the need to finish new experiments and completing my thesis in time, I had little time for other things. Many thanks to HH for allowing me to stay over in his hall on Monday! =) I realized the worst part of writing a report is never the content itself. It’s always about the language, format, labeling, referencing, contents page, statistics etc. Looking back, it’s the first time I had to write such a long report with so many technical terms, and what’s worst is that my supervisor and examiner are not people I can anyhow smoke. I really need to know how to explain every single statement that is in the thesis, and of cos much more.

Went to see my supervisor today to let him check my draft thesis and there are certain parts that had to be changed. Well, he may not be that good as a supervisor, but I know he’s trying to help me be better prepared for my presentation to the examiner. After all, its probably gonna be the last time he asks me to do anything haha, and probably the last time I’ll be seeing him as well. So yup, just need to quickly make some changes and then submit it in 2 days’ time. After that can take a small breather before the final showdown with my examiner hahaha.


Anyway.. now should be the crunch period in NUS, with all the assignments due, continual assessments, projects etc. With the exams starting in less than 4 weeks, there’s little time to think of fun. Everyone 加油加油! =)