Sleep?

(Something that both the Cat and I would appreciate!)

I was supposed to sleep nearly an hour ago, was so damn tired that I really couldn’t take it. But the work that had to be done was glaring right back at me, sending out the invites to other classmates to invite them to our group wiki for them to critique our work, setting up the yahoogroup for ourselves for ease of communication, checking and reading up on our group wiki to make sure that everything is looking good and ready to go, and trying to remember the scrap pieces of admin work that I have to do in order to clear things up. I have yet to do my reflection on my ICT this week, I should get going on that tomorrow morning.

Am so drained after the whole of today, like I was telling Peanut, today was the longest day I’ve spent in school thus far and that meeting was one damn long one – almost 4 hours! I haven’t had such an inefficient 4 hours long meeting ever since my beginning years in SMU! Dear goodness. Dinner tonight was niceee, and I finally had a touch at Borders on new books, and smelling them. Grisham has a wonderful new book that looks utterly enticing to me, and I bought Peter Cincotti (the CD, not book) just a few days ago!

Re-organised the yahoomail and found really old documents like old emails that was sent during JC times in preparation for Interact Installation, proposals for installation and an Interact teeshirt that never materialised. I wonder where did our design went. Hurhur.

I better get off to bed, my eyelids are really heavy and tomorrow looks set like yet another long day.

Yawns.

Windows 7

Did you hear, Windows 7 is landing on our shores really soon? It’s a replacement for the highly criticised Vista, which has plenty of issues (many of which I won’t deny). Windows 7 is claimed to be something developed by developers who listened to us, and came up with this sleeker, and simpler Windows 7.

I’ve heard many of my friends complain about Vista, complain about Office 07. Now, faster than you saw it coming, Windows 7 is expected to be launched by 2010. Windows 7, is moving drastically away from XP. It might be vaguely similar to Vista, but I saw huge differences in the videos online. Granted, people are going to start complaining that Win7 is as usual, copying the Mac OS – but come on, give credit when it’s due. If its graphically stimulating and they are acting on our feedback that most people out there want something similar to the Mac OS, they are giving it to us, right? But thats not my main point of contention here.

Online reviews have been good, and I’m downloading a copy of the beta so that I can test it out for myself on my baby (provided I can find the backup windows vista installation – I hope). People – it is time to move on. You can say that Vista was buggy, too many UI issues, Office 07 may look different, feel different, as such you don’t like to use it and you’d rather use Office 03. However, technology is moving on, way faster than we expected them to. We can’t keep staying in the world of the revolutionary Windows XP simply because we’re used to it. Everything has a learning curve, everything changes. Like it or not, XP will be phased out and you will have to learn to use the latest OS sooner or later. You’ve got to climb that mountainous learning curve sooner or later, so better sooner than later, isn’t it. If you’re accustomed to Vista, then you’ll probably have less of a learning curve than one who has stuck to XP for the last gazillion years (yes I’m exaggerating, on purpose).

Frankly, I haven’t had much of an issue with Vista for the last 2 years, but that may be because I’m not a programmer or developer, and I will admit that sometimes the amount of clicking I have to do, just to change something small, is crazily silly. But I’m game for more positive changes, and if plenty of online reviews make Windows 7 sound promising, I’ll upgrade if it means it’ll reduce my UI issues and the amount of clicking I have to do (which by now, you should have sensed my sarcasm).

I’m not urging people here to go try the Beta Windows 7. I’m just appealing to people to give new technology a chance, be it Windows or Apple.

NB: Microsoft did not pay me to do all these, I’m just damn tired of all the whining that Vista sucks, Office 07 sucks because people can’t find things they want to use. Learn people, learn. I hyperlinked all my Windows 7 phrases, directing them to the main site. So if you got irritated with my ranting and decided to click on it, go see it for yourself to see if you like it, lest you come back and tell me I tried to stuff it down your throat and you hated it.

01:28

I’m not asleep. Just finished talking to BX who was brain dead and went off to bed, currently talking to Kon who’s getting his preddy simply because I, as a teacher, said so. Tonight was pretty funny, when we were spamming the off topic thread with inane senseless nonsense in chinese, rendering the more anglicised forumers being unable to understand what on earth we were saying.

Am enjoying my big comfy headphones, the RX700 is really good, nicely balanced but a slight lack in bass. I’m a closet basshead, so nice bass in ample sound staging would be nice in a pair of circum-aural headphones. The highs are really sweet, but I would prefer the acoustics to be crisper. The guitar sounds are still not shiok enough. I dream of the day I get my ESW10s.

Work is starting to trickle in, what with the projects that are slowly starting. I barely finished my group wiki for the night, and I still need to blog about today’s (yesterday’s) lesson. I think I shall do it later when I wake up.

I should go exercise. Maybe I’ll do it over the weekend, go for the weekend classes. (: Or go workout before meeting Peanut on Friday. Tomorrow was supposed to be a free day, but somehow I agreed to meeting an ex student for tea at BB Coffee Bean, and ST for dinner at Mayim. I do miss Mayim’s food, hence I suggested Chinese for tomorrow.

I should get around reading up for Friday’s classes, butbutbut. There are plenty of reasons not to, for which I shouldn’t mention. Sounds mystic, don’t I.

I should get to bed, it’s really getting quite late.

Hot.

The weather today is damn hot – where has the wind gone?

Feeling so nua today – was supposed to go gym before I meet Kon for the headphone sale, but I came home instead, partly because I’m lazy, partly because there’s work to be done which I highly suspect I might not get around doing until I come home after the headphone sale.

Amazingly its already 年初三 and the coffeeshops near my place are not open. I had to settle for Macs for lunch, and I was afraid that I had to settle for it for dinner again, so I bought bread from Four Leaves for dinner. Shall save a teeny weeny bit of space for supper later. Might look around in the cupboards for soup or smth.

Am feeling so sleepy now, because I went to turn on the a/c in my room. The weather is so sweltering hot, its horrible. Doesn’t it make you feel woozy? And my mouth has an eeky oily after taste from Macs now – but I had the grilled foldover (which honestly, is horrible) and I didn’t even finish the fries! If only it was KFC, or Carls Junior in place of Macs, that would be so much better.

Sigh.

An hour more to leaving the house. What shall I do? Ponders.

Back to School – again.

Feels weird to be going back to school after such a long break. Effectively, I decided that my break started last Thursday because the Friday classes were nearly inconsequential to begin with – ask me why in person. It’s almost a week since I properly touched any work at all, since I got my work on the other blog done while waiting for the CSC meeting last Wednesday. This week is going to be a pretty easy week as well, especially when I have the evenings free to myself, except for Friday when I’m gonna be meeting Peanutto Chan to chilll. Haven’t seen her for a gazillion years and more.

This CNY has been an interesting one, with me running to the toilet 4 times an hour on the first day, and meeting SY for movie and dinner and girltalk/shopping on the 2nd day. Avoided visiting for particular reasons that most of you should understand, and it has been a pretty peaceful one since then. There are still follow-up activities, especially when my families are big and two days of CNY is not enough for the visiting that we usually do. As we speak, my parents and sister are out visiting again, while I stay at home to get ready for class later at 130pm. I already got off lucky, my EL class was cancelled today, if not I would be on my way to school by now.

Speaking of that, I wonder if Roo went for class this morning. Tralala.

Bride Wars was funny, and heartwarming at times. There was this statement made during the movie at some point in time, towards the later part that got me thinking.

Some time in life, you’ll find somebody who will always be there for you. It may be your partner, but it may also be the little girl who grew up with you.

Have I found that someone yet? I don’t know. Time will tell, I guess.

Am picking up my headphones later this evening, and meeting Weihan for supper! Hahaha he’s cabbing over to my place, I think the prata place should be open 24hours, as claimed by my parents. We’ll see about that. In the meantime, I should hunt for some food, I’m hungry, and I have to settle lunch myself. No more porridge, hurrraayyy!

Where The Hell Is Matt?

I’m sure we’ve all seen the Visa advertisement, but this is the real deal. Check out the following videos: watch them in sequence!

If you couldn’t see the piechart clearly, here’s the bigger version. It is key to understanding the whole damn thing.

I nearly wanted to die laughing when I was watching the second video. Wasn’t it damn obvious that he was trying to crack a joke?

The funniest moment of the first day of the Lunar New Year! Hurhur.

HONK!

Awww tonight was such an enjoyable night! HOOONK.

This is the main reason why I keep HONK-ing. This closing musical for SMU Arts Fest was utterly delightful! The cat and I enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and the cast was pretty stellar! We agreed that the females in the ensemble were alot better than the males, but the three leads were fantabulous. The ugly duckling was soo geekly cute at the beginning. LOLS. Directed by Sebastian Tan (the main reason why we were there), I could see traces of the local musical productions similar to the ones I’ve watched over the past years, and I must say, for an amateur performance, they did splendid!

Well done!

My only complaint, it was a tad long – I was craving for dessert and I was hoping it wasn’t a full length musical, but alas by the time it ended it was 10:45pm and by the time we got out to civilisation (aka out of Victoria Theatre) it was nearly 11. Since I have to get to Ling’s place by 10ish tomorrow, I scraped the idea of popping by MacDonalds for their 60cents icecream. But I’m hungry noww – we had Sushi Tei for dinner (as usual) and I had one hotate (yummmmmmmy), a rainbow roll (6 pieces of sushi) and 2 pieces of salmon belly sushi. I’m hungry now. Hums.

Tonight was really nice though, meeting up for dinner and strolling over lazily to VT for a musical. Now I simply can’t wait to watch 天冷就回來 again coming April, and swooon over George Chan again. Szemin told me she’s skipping 天冷就回來 to go watch Design for Living (華麗上班族之生活與生存) which is starring 张艾嘉 與 郑元畅!! OMG super bo jio can! Or rather, by the time she told me about it, tickets are already almost sold out and I have tuition the very same afternoon.

Oh sigh.

Nothing else during the Huayi Festival looks interesting, I’m still awaiting more acts for the Mosaic Festival to come along, before I decide if I should start jio-ing people to go for any. Time to go surf Sistic for abit, before I go to sleep and hopefully wake up in time. Hurhur.

Deliiiiicious.

Am so poisoned to the core. Absolutely to the core.

Came back from Stereo a while back, and I am 150% convinced that I’m getting the ESW10 – first or second hand. Die also must lay my hands on one pair of it. The Stereo people were really friendly, and I learnt quite abit from the guys there! He was naming the different amps that could potentially be paired with, and how they will each change the sound of the ESW10. Too bad they didn’t have the Pico, or I would have gave it a try, Uber said the Pico was worth trying. The iQube, didn’t wow initially, but I think I didn’t audition it enough.

My iPod was running out of battery, can you imagine. Urgh. I nearly wanted to kill mself when the battery bar was perpetually in the red. I couldn’t let go of the ESW10. The jazz pieces were amazing, and when I paired it with the Viper for a very quick while, there was a wow moment. I tested it with Queen’s Don’t stop me now and the soundstage, the colouration was phenomenal.

They got me thinking about LODs (line out docks) though. I paired it for a while with my E5 and UM1 and it significantly improved the quality of the music by quite alot. Main reason being the line out dock bypasses the opamp inside the iPod (which is terrible and incorrigible) and the music signal doesn’t get distorted by the amplifier inside the iPod. Might get a silver LOD sometime later, may scour the second hand forums for that.

Did I mention, I reserved a pair of JVC HA-RX700 from Kon on Jaben forums, picking them up next Wednesday – and this pair of cans is only going for $55SGD! It’s a week old pair of second hand cans – Kon felt that it was not dark enough for him, which should suit me just fine given that I prefer more balanced and neutral tones. Wheeee! Am looking to get a DAC for the laptop, and the occasional home use. The baby has absolutely terrible sound quality – it could be due to the speakers, but I’ve been looking to get a GoVibe or an Ordance DAC, so it should suffice for now. The Zero DAC can wait a while longer.

New lovely next Wednesday!

This is all so purging-of-wallet-ish. I need to look for protectors to protect the woody cans of the ESW10, and a casing for it when I wear it outside. I’m damn well going to bring it out and enjoy my music on the go with this yummilicious portable can.

I think you all will faint when you hear the price tagged to it. Eeeps.

Jaben, or Stereo.

I have a crazy (maybe?) 7 hour break in between classes tmr. I can actually go somewhere, go home then go out again. Madness, isn’t it. No plans for tomorrow night though, looking at the crazy time I’ll end – potentially 7pm in school, if we get lucky and the session end slightly earlier.

I’m wondering what I should do tomorrow during the 7 hour break, I think I’ll pop by either Jaben or Stereo to test try headphones and amplifiers. Yearning to try the ESW10 + Pico after talking to Uber that night. 聼聼就好，反正現在也沒錢買，讓自己爽一下。Going back to Jaben means I’m going back to somewhere familar, and it means I’m travelling down to City Hall. I can actually meet people for lunch first! Or, go Jaben and test, and have discipline to drag myself away to meet people for lunch. Alternatively, I can try going up northwards to Stereo, and try out their services there. David did mention that their style is slightly different from Jaben, but just as friendly.

So, now lies the question – Jaben or Stereo?

I know I should be doing Ed Psych readings, or doing up the meeting minutes from CSC last night, but I can’t help but surf the forums on headphones. Hands very itchy, am contemplating getting a JVC non portable that is cheap and comes highly reccomended by people. Jaben has started to sell them too also!

Hums.

Edit: Decided – I shall pop by Stereo tomorrow! Wheeee!

School life

It is damn frustrating when the baby doesn’t want to work well outside the house. Im starting to think that my baby might be shy. Urgh. Either that or it is thinking that wireless networks are intruding into its privacy, as such it doesn’t want to allow access to these instrusive wireless networks.

However, when I don’t attempt to use too much of the bandwidth on my baby, it works perfectly fine! I finished the blog entry required for my edublog (it is updated!) while waiting to meet ST for dinner before we move off to the meeting at Pioneer CC. Apparently I read in one of my emails that I have to go for a treasurer’s course in Feb. Urgh can I tell them to waive it by waving my degree in Actg in front of them? No time to spare ah! I still have readings not done, and work not completed.

I’m enjoying the company of my english tutorial group – they are a fun bunch of people and we always have fun in class. I’ve been grouped with the group who has Lit for their other CS and so far it has been a pretty fun ride! We try to get each other to hang out together for meals (though I admit I run off for gym half way in between class) and we all so happened to go home together (i.e. take 199 out together) after our various classes today. Our timetable is pretty similar, so we see each other around quite abit. ICT has been fun too, especially today’s mad scramble on finding project groups to work with and putting our names down for the presentation date.

It has been a pretty long while since I’ve had such enjoyment that’s not related to close friends. Moving on, yo? Life has been treating me pretty fairly for now, meeting nice new people, hanging out with new friends and still keeping in touch with old ones. Though there are some old friends that I haven’t been seeing much of. Peanutpeanutpeanut for instance. And Szeyi! There’s Brandon too, whose season just ended, and has to wait for 3 months for his next season to start. Hmms. I need to make time for people!

But like I was telling the cat, it feels nice to feel busy, occupied. To be able to see something in your life and work towards it, going for classes, knowing new people, enjoying lessons for now.. It can be tiring at times, but I think its just a matter of regaining the stamina and finding the momentum. Quiet moments with self can be stolen like this, when I sit at a cafe and listen to Cook/Powter in the background, and blogging away on the baby.

Speaking of that, somebody got his new baby yesterday too hor – can’t wait to fiddle with the Zen X-fi. HAHAHA.

I’m still waiting for ST to appear. He said he’s going to reach by 7, but I don’t see him anywhere in sight, though I know there’s 5 minutes left. I shall continue to wait, surf the net and feel blessed. (: