A Better Title

“I have no more questions for you, thank you.”

As the FYP moderator completed that sentence after my presentation, I knew it was the end for me. The end of my academic life, of seventeen years of formal education (4 years uni + 2 years JC + 2 years secondary + 3 years junior high school + 6 years elementary school). It also marks the start of the next phase of my life, replacing school with career and classmates with colleagues.

Let me just take a quick tour down the memory lane as I recall what had happened throughout my four years in the university.

***

First year

I was still green. I still remember my aims at that time were to get straight A’s, to be in the Dean’s List as many times as possible, to participate in research, and to be active in CCAs. I even aimed to take up a PhD at the end of the four years. Of all the aims, I managed to obtain none.

Participated in my first Indonesian freshmen orientation. It was fun.

I joined the Visual Arts Society and SIGGRAPH as my ECAs, with a few others in which I’m just a member.

I had a massive culture shock, with the majority of the Singaporeans speaking Chinese and foreigners speaking in their own tongues, leaving me with a majority of Indonesian friends.

I also decided to take up the Minor in Communication Studies, taking visual and designing modules. I was exempted from some core subjects, so I managed to finish the minor by my second year.

Results were quite satisfactory, although the Accounting module I took in the special semester was horrendous.

Also took part as a committee member for two external projects: Digital DESIGN and Image|reel, even though I was in Indonesia most of the time (I was acting as webmaster). It was a wonderful experience working with the best team I ever worked with in my entire university life.

***

Second year

Suddenly my Indonesian friends were spread into the different courses. So do my best of friends. As we don’t meet too often anymore, we gradually started to lose touch.

I became a committee member of the Indonesian freshmen orientation and took too much photos and videos. I still have one video tape untouched and unedited since then. But it was fun.

I decided to focus on SIGGRAPH for my ECA, acting as the special projects manager. Arranged a lot of activities with the rest of the team, though the bond wasn’t as close as it was in Digital DESIGN the previous year.

I found my love in SIGGRAPH.

Completed my Minor in Communication Studies. Started to regret going to EEE, wishing I was in SCE instead. The funny thing was my results were only getting better. Still, no Dean’s List for me. Too much competition.

Participated in Digital DESIGN that year as vice chairperson. It wasn’t that bad I suppose.

***

Third year

The best year of my university life.

Forgone exchange programme and research opportunity, partly due to financial reasons, and partly to spend time with the one I loved.

Left all ECAs, partly as I would be having an internship, and the same second reason as above.

Results were the best of my three years. Unsurprisingly, still no Dean’s List for me. But I didn’t care anymore.

Second semester was spent on internship. It was the best semester. Learnt a lot of new things at work, and realised that university degree isn’t everything. Had a lot of fun during internship.

Circle of friends was even smaller.

Started to have doubts about my love.

***

Fourth year

Exactly the opposite of the third year. It was the most horrible of the four years.

Attempted to be very serious, but it was quite hard after the realization during internship.

FYP didn’t go well from the beginning, and it was only towards the end that things started to look better. Dropped everything, including socialising and entertainment, for FYP. Nevertheless, completed it rather successfully despite the suffering.

HRM was a killer module, with the amount of work exceeding even that of FYP.

Didn’t join any ECAs despite my initial intention to, as I expected the academic workload to be heavy.

Realised that I still loved her after all. But in the end, I still lost my love to… projects? stupidity? But did I actually lose it, or did I leave it? Will I regret doing what I did in the future? I’ll probably never know.

Didn’t widen my social circle much, but attempted to deepen what I already have, with polarized results.

Took up Chinese, though I’m still too shy to actually use it.

Still, academic results in first semester were about the same as that in year 3. Now waiting for results for second semester.

***

Well, that pretty much sums up my four years… Will probably add on things if I can remember them.

Thursday was Labour Day, and so I was in the hospital in labour stayed at home to rest and play games… Managed to improve my standing to #2 in Singapore for TrackMania Nations Forever Solo. If anyone’s playing the game, do add me as your buddy. My login ID is hendribudi and my password is *******.

Didn’t have much to do on Friday, so I went to school to return the book I smuggled out borrowed from library for my last paper. Also went to the International Student Centre to collect my PR invitation letter. I’m not a PR yet, but I will be eligible to apply for PR once I get a job. I also went to the Career and Attachment Office to get my IA certificate. Finally I’m starting to see something out of my university education.

After putting the items in my locker, I headed out to the airport. I SMSed some of my friends, but none wanted to go, so I went on my own. It was a nostalgic trip, with all the nice memories there. Bought mint chocolate and Cadbury chocolate at Candy Empire.

I managed to catch the A380 while at T3. Also attempted to spot airplanes, though I still have to brush up on my airplane identification skill. The airplanes were landing on runway 20R, and probably 20C (I could only see the first runway from T3), and so it would have been perfect had I been in Changi Village instead, since it would be just under the landing path.

I wanted to spot the A380 taking off to Sydney, so I made my way to Terminal 2. Unfortunately the viewing gallery was too small and anyway it was quite dark out there, so I didn’t catch the take off in the end.

I had my dinner at Popeyes Chicken, but unfortunately it wasn’t nice at all. Perhaps I was just unfortunate to get the tasteless chicken or maybe it was just the lack of company. Kind of regretted getting the 3 chicken meal set that I bought.

I was contemplating to go home, but heard that Daphne was going to meet Chillycraps and Xizor2000 in town. So I went to drop by Suntec’s Starbucks.

The journey to Starbucks was not without any challenges–I thought they were at the Starbucks in one of the Suntec towers. So I went all the way, only to be told that they were at the Suntec Convention Centre Starbucks, which is like just next to the exit of the underpass I had to take to get to Suntec…

So I made my way back to the correct Starbucks. It was also the first time that I met my plug police partner Xizor2000. It was great meeting them, though Chillycraps had to leave early. Thanks to Xizor2000, now I know how to use the shoutbox on my phone without any additional devices. Maybe I’ll do a walkthrough post on this too.

We only left after midnight, and since there was no more trains available, Xizor2000 and I shared a cab home.

Heh, this post sounds very boring… I really wonder where did all those funny jokes I used to pepper my blog with go.

Procrastination is not good. Since exams ended on 29 April, I’ve thought of many things to blog about, just that I haven’t gone about putting them into writing.

Fine, I haven’t gone about putting them into typing.

That sentence sounds weird.

Anyhow, I’ve been going out and spending quite a lot of money since exams ended. Not that I’m rich or anything, but I think I deserve a rest after all those weeks holing myself up either at home or in school to mug.

Tuesday evening was spent with a friend. It’s been a while since the two of us last met, and I only realised that I wore exactly the same shirt that I wore the previous time we met.

I swore I changed in between.

Dinner was at Pepper Lunch (our favourite) followed by coffee at Starbucks. It was inevitable that the chat revolved around romance, and I must admit that I am not ready to move on to another girl. In the meantime I’ll just wait and see how things go.

After deliberating later on in the Ping.sg shoutbox, I decided to go with Krisandro and Ironic Gamer to the Podfire.sg launch event at Geek Terminal on Wednesday evening. It was also the first time I met Krisandro in person.

Podfire.sg is a podcast aggregator based in Singapore. Currently they carry the Blogger’s Treat (a food show done by bloggers) and Geek Goddess (a technology show, also done by bloggers) as their inaugural episodes. Unfortunately, the inaugural episodes of the two shows failed to impress me. They are not badly done per se, but perhaps it was because I had carried a certain amount of expectation of the shows.

It would be great if the hosts in Blogger’s Treat were more vocal and describe the food that they are eating in more details, because after all viewers can’t taste them when watching the show, instead relying on visual and aural clues. I also felt that there was too much emphasis on the hosts instead of the food itself, but it could be just me.

The Geek Goddess show was riddled with technical issues, for example there was one time where the host spoke softly, and just when I was straining my ears, the host started a song which was very loudly, startling me in the process. Also, since the website reviewed was in Chinese, it didn’t really appeal to me.

Nevertheless, it seems like a new idea and I’m sure that subsequent shows will be much better.

They have also teamed up with Tech65 (another technology podcast from Singapore) as their partner. I met numerous people at the event, old and new: Arzhou, DK, Paddy, Nadnut (first time), Mintea, Tian Hong, Nicole, Uzyn, Ridz, Krisandro (first time), Ironic Gamer, Sabrina (the host of Blogger’s Treat, though I didn’t talk to her in the end), Daphne, Deadpris (first time), Jean, Claudia, Bernard, Miccheng, Lu Yee, Farinelli, and many others (apologies if I missed out your name here!).

Food was onion rings, spring roll, sandwich, and potato wedges. It was alright, but of course, an event at Geek Terminal is not perfect without Danny’s coffee. As usual, Nicole never failed to manage to get Danny to stretch his creativity and come up with new drinks. I wonder what they were, since I didn’t get to drink them, but they sure look good (look at some of the photos in Jean’s blog).

Unfortunately, I was too shy to interact with the others (it’s amazing what months of anti-social life can cause you) so I remained rather low-profile throughout the event.

We then headed out to The Pump Room, which is a pub located a few stones’ throw away in Clarke Quay. Not knowing what to expect, I let DK order my drink which was their signature lager beer. It was then that I realised why I hated beer.

As the music (mostly oldies) started and the crowd started to dance, I felt totally out place there and decided to retreat to the back of the room. I’m more of a geek than a clubber, and so I watched people dance in the background. A while later, Ironic Gamer, Daphne, Tian Hong, Deadpris and I decided to call it a day and caught our last trains for home.

In the perfect world, this is what is supposed to happen last night up to the two-paper combo I have this evening and tomorrow morning.

Monday, 21 April 2008

• 6 pm: Wake up
• 10 pm: Reach school
• 10 pm-5am: Go through character list for Chinese paper

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

• 6 am: Go home
• 6 am-12 pm: Sleep
• 12-4 pm: Go through book one more time
• 5-7.30 pm: Chinese paper
• 9 pm-3 am: Sleep

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

• 3-8 am: Revise Embedded Systems one more time
• 9-11 am: Embedded Systems paper

Of course, nothing is perfect. I finished going through the characters list by 6 am, but by then it was raining heavily and I didn’t bring an umbrella along. So I stayed in school, had breakfast, and by the time I reached home it was already 8.30 am.

I set my alarm clock to 12.30 pm, half an hour later than planned. Then from 9-10.30 am, I just lay awake on my bed, tossing and turning, trying to sleep but couldn’t. At 10.30 am, I decided to postpone my waking up time to 1 pm instead.

From 10.30-11.30 am, I still tossed and turned. For some reason I was really sensitive to external interference. Like when I put on my blanket, I felt warm, but when I took it off, I felt cold. When I raised the air-con temperature by one degree, I felt warm again, and so on so forth.

Even the slightest sound of my flatmate hanging his clothes in the bathroom (the sound is caused by the metal hanger hitting the wall which is adjacent to my room) put me in an alert state again.

Finally at about 11.40 am, I was just about to fall asleep.

Just about.

Then my handphone rang.

!#$&@&!&.

And from my experience, once I’m awakened when I’m just about to fall asleep, I won’t be able to fall asleep so easily afterwards.

I might as well don’t sleep now. Besides, my experience with the English language has been that my linguistic abilities performing better when I don’t have enough sleep. For some reason, the creative side of me is able to string together more complicated and intricate sentences better when I don’t sleep enough. I hope it’s the same with Chinese.

Now the only problem is that if I were to do that, I would be awake for more than 24 hours by the time Chinese paper ends. That will leave me in a severe shortage of sleep, and I doubt the 6 hour sleep I catered to give enough time for the last-minute Embedded Systems revision is enough.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

The good thing is that I can sleep all I want after the Embedded Systems paper, since my last paper will be on 29 April.

Meanwhile, I’m off to mug Chinese again.

I’ve just had a long talk with my supervisor. Basically, other than the relatively good news on my FYP (which I’m not comfortable with sharing), he also offered me an opportunity to do a PhD with his team.

On one hand, I have an option of taking scholarship, even be paid to take PhD, so financially it’s not so much of a problem. On top of that, PhD is like a gateway to higher paying jobs, those which utilize as much of whatever brain cells left in my head before they die. PhD is also one of the options that I’ve considered, albeit admittedly one of the last.

On the other hand, I’m currently feeling a bit sick of studying, so adding another 3 years seems to be quite a torture. And, knowing what happened during my FYP, there’s no guarantee that I can complete PhD studies satisfactorily. And… the biggest issue here is that I think it will be a waste of my 3 years if I don’t end up staying in academia, either as a lecturer or researcher. It also brings up the issue of overqualification, where my certificate may be too advanced for the type of job that I really want to do.

I have until next Friday to decide… Any inputs, anyone?

Whee, looking forward to the event this Saturday. It’s the LandWaterSky tour, which I’ll be going with my girl friend, my boy friend, and another girl friend. Thanks to the Prime Minister’s Office for the treat! I just hope that it doesn’t rain on the day itself.

0845hrs - Gather at NTU ISC for bus transport
0930hrs - Gather at FunVee Counter located at Lau Pa Sat food centre
0945hrs - Captain Explorer Amphibious Tour (Land & Sea)
1045hrs - 1 hour FunVee City Hopper Double Decker Open Top Bus
1145hrs - Board FunVee Double Decker Open Top to Harbourfront
1210hrs - Cable Car Ride to Jewel Box
1230hrs - Refreshments at Jewel Box
1300hrs - Depart Jewel Box to NTU or Vivo City

I think it’s going to be fun! Too bad the package doesn’t also include the Singapore Flyer. I’d love to see how it’s like being inside the largest ferris wheel (currently) in the world! I’ll try to do a live moblog on the day itself, so stay tuned!

After the trip, I will be heading down to ACJC for the Fun-O-Rama. I was so looking forward to go at first, then hesitant knowing that a lot of things can happen between now and then, but after a while of thinking, I decided I will go no matter what. It’s my alma mater after all!

I may go with the girl friend, the boy friend, and the another girl friend, but even if they can’t make it, I will still go. At least to catch up with the teachers there. Maybe I’ll drop by ACS(I) too… I heard there are a lot of new developments down there. Can’t wait to go there again after two years!

I hope it’ll be a wonderful week for everyone!

As the system clock ticked past midnight on 19 March, my age register was incremented by one and before I knew it, the value was 0×17 (one byte is enough to contain the value of the register).

For the benefit of those who don’t understand, let me rephrase that sentence:

I turned 23 on 19 March.

Damn, I’m no longer so young now.

Thanks to those who remembered, either via Facebook messages, Friendster messages, SMS, MSN messages, email, even those automated emails from the likes of Care2.com, WhoLivesNearYou.com and subscribed forums.

To those who didn’t know/remember… now you do.

So what did I do on that day?

I woke up at 9.30, pressed the snooze button until it was 10.30, cooked instant noodles for breakfast, and went for class at 11.30-12.30.

The rest of the day was spent in the Computer Engineering Lab, doing my EE4455 Embedded Systems continuous assignment. When the lecturer said CONTINUOUS assignment, he really meant it. I’ve been doing the assignment for 4 days, and I’m still not done yet. Well, blame my anal nature to have to check and recheck and recheck my 0xFF80 0000’s and 0xFF90 0000’s before I dare to put them in the report.

Spent about 5.5 hours on the CA, from 12.30 pm to 6 pm, totally forgetting about my lunch. Had dinner, and then whiled some time away and started doing the report for the CA. I wrote for about 17 pages before realizing that it was 2 am in the morning and I went home afterwards. Slept at 3, and woke up at 8 this morning, and came a little late for 8.30 class.

So, that was how I spent my day.

How did you spend yours?

0×17,
hendri

When a person is under stress, it’s not uncommon for him to think illogically.

Put two stressed people together, and you get a nonsensical chat on nonsensical topics.

Like murder.

(Warning: potentially gross, but lame content ahead)

You know, they said that you die quite quickly if you cut the artery in your neck.
Yeah, that’s what I heard too.
Wanna try?
How?
Is your roommate around?
I think so. I have a fork at home.
You want to use fork? That will be too slow. We might as well use shaver.
Yeah, let’s shave his neck till he dies.
OK.

Murderous Stressed,
hendri

This is the photo that I am going to use for both the Indonesian yearbook and the EEE yearbook.

If you can’t read the blurred text, it says “Computer Engineering”.

Because my heart wishes I was there.

Wishing to be in Computer Engineering,
hendri

PS: Technically, my specialization in EEE is Computer Engineering, that’s why I blocked the words “School of” that actually exist in front of the text “Computer Engineering”. However, the things that we learn in EEE are just scratching the surface of what CE majors do.

PPS: In case it isn’t clear enough, what I really mean is that I want to be in Computer Engineering because I think it suits me more than EEE.

I learned a lot about life today, that things are not always as what it seemed, and some things are really not worth wasting my precious energy on.

Which reminds me of the song Life by the sweet-voiced Aselin Debison.

Read more for the lyrics.

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