Striking balance

So now that the blue moon has come and gone as Heng Lean found himself a job and is not laying at home doing nothing..... officially everyone here is a full-time worker (Jy was one at least).

You know, i used to say that working like is tough and that you have less free time yada yada no social life etc. but now that im into my second month, it doesnt seem too bad. Sure, there are times that you will struggle to keep up with time. Example: you go to work from 7am to 7pm and you come home to eat dinner and then you talk to your gf and then you go out with your friends for drinks and that sounds like you've done heaps in a day! BUT then how about the desk that you havent cleaned? How bout that book you aimed to finish in a month? How about fixing the software on your comp that has been bugging you? Not to mention after doing so much without rest during the day you end up bushed the morning despite getting the mandatory 8 hrs sleep?

In the end, you just adapt to it. I used to whine about how i wouldn't be able to keep up with my gaming needs but now id doesn't seem like a priority now. I'd much prefer to see my friends with the little free time i have to just have some kind of social life even though its just sitting and talking for an hour. Now i understand why my cousin can buy a PSP and not use it and borrowed it to me unconditionally. Where is it now? In my drawer.

In the end, it's about striking a balance, between your social life, alone time, work, hobbies, girlfriend.......and eventually you'll adapt to a routine to suit your needs. Just make sure you enjoy your life everyday =)

Joining the workforce

So im back in the office. Woo hoo. Things didn't start off so well, there weren't many jobs assigned to me, mostly very small stuff that's very uninspiring and uninteresting. Other than that, it's trying to look busy while doing nothing at all. How fun. Thankfully things are starting to pick up a bit, got a hang of Microstation which is the program that they are fond off, did some quick photoshopping and designing and doing some overtime and meeting deadlines.... finally feeling like im officially joining the workforce.

The atmosphere in the office this time is pretty good. The average age group has dropped quite significantly since the last time, so mixing around is pretty easy. There are a few ppl who are actually one year younger than me in the team who are technical officers and a few architecture newbies like me who just came in. The technical ppl are a bit hard to mix since they are very chinese speaking, but they are friendly nonetheless. The seniors that were around the last time were mostly still sticking around, and the annoying one is gone. So all is going well, other than the fact that i worked this Saturday but am getting paid no OT.

Cloverfield joins Top Movies List

By now most of you have already watched Cloverfield, and half you liked it and the rest didn't. This is the first movie i have seen people walking out of the cinema just half an hour into the movie. I even heard from HeXiang that her friend puked after watching it. I did, however had a great time watching this unique film, and has officially become my Best Monster Movie of all time, overtaking the likes of Godzilla, King Kong and Jurassic Park (and many others).

For those living under a shell, Cloverfield is a movie about a monster attacking New York. Its as simple as that. Not much explanation was given as to how the monster came about or whether it was killed at the end. It is, however, filmed from the perspective of regular citizens, not heroes who were trying to save the world. It was what made the movie feel so fresh, and it does make a good job making you believe that you could be the one experiencing all this nightmare and running around the city for your lives while getting chased by some giant ass monsters. I found that this made the movie is more like a ride rather than a film, but it was not a bad thing as it was a very enjoyable one.

Unfortunately, many people could not enjoy the film as much as i did and i perfectly understand why. The camera is very shaky (imagine yourself holding a camera and running your ass off) so it can easily cause dizziness especially people who are sitting towards the front. Its like motion sickness, some people get it some people don't. Another common complaint is a lack of a proper ending but i have to disagree with this. It is a very suiting ending to this kind of film. We are not watching a chick flick where its perfectly predictable and there is always a happy ending.

In conclusion, i highly recommend this to any movie lovers who are open-minded and ready to try something new. There is a chance that it may not be your type of flick, but if it is you will be highly rewarded. 9/10 from me.

Top Movies List:

Best Movie: The Matrix
I remember going to this movie initially to watch all the cool fighting scenes but was surprised to discover a deep and interesting plot that tied the whole movie together. And bullet time was awesome back then. Too bad the sequels were watchable at best.

Best Trilogy: Lord Of The Rings
There is no argument here. Lets move on.

Best Sci-fi Flick: Star Wars Episode 3
Could have dethroned LOTR if it wasn't for Episode 1 & 2. The third installment was basically a Star Wars' fan's wet dream. Features the best lightsabre battles to date.

Best Horror Movie: Sixth Sense
Sorry havent watched that many in this genre but this is the best so far. Had a good story and had a few good frights. Very original at that time.

Best Monster Movie: Cloverfield
Read above.

Best 3d Animation: Ratatouiie
All Pixar movies derserve a nomination except Cars. This was the latest and i think its their best so far.

Best 2d Animation: Lilo & Stitch
Very cute and enjoyable. Why don't they make any of these anymore? 2d art is underappreciated. (I heard Pixar's next film is 2d though so i'm keeping my fingers crossed)

Best Romantic Film: Love Actually, A Walk To Remember
Hard to decide because Love Actually was a light comedy and AWTR was pure romance. I loved most of Love Actually's minis-tories except a few, but very enjoyable overall. AWTR was a surprisingly good performance from Mandy Moore and was very touching and sweet.

Best Comedy: Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers, Shrek 2
Too tough to call considering i watch too many of these, plus we get more jokes as we grow older. These are the recent few on the top of my head that i have personally enjoyed.

Best Chick Flick: 10 Things I Hate About You
My first chick flick turned out to be the best so far. Featured great acting (Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles) and a decent plot and most importantly, a very feel good story.

Best Drama: Forrest Gump
Great story about life and Tom Hanks is excellent. Instant classic.

Best Action: Kill Bill Vol. 1
Very cheesey at times but i enjoyed the art and mindless chopping. (Not to mention showers of blood) Honorable mentions include Die Hard 4 and the Bourne Trilogy.

Best Musical: Grease
King of the cheese. But for some reason the songs are stuck in my head. Hairspray is very good too. I like my musicals to be brainless and cheerful.

Phew, got carried away and the list got longer and longer.

Watching Friends on DVD

After all these years i still think that Friends is one of the most addictive and fun comedy around. Maybe because i grew up with it and can connect to each of the characters so well after watching them for so long. Its amazing when you see the consistency in their characters even after 10 seasons; it almost seems like they already grew into those characters. I remember David Schwimmer once saying that he wants ppl to stop calling him "Ross" but i dont think we can help it. If (very big if) I were to bump into any of the stars the first thing that will pop into my mind is their Friends character. I think even they themselves can get out of it when they act in other roles. Just look at the millions of movies that Jennifer Aniston has acted in and she is basically "Rachel" in every single one of them.

As a side note, i have discovered how to burn videos onto DVDs that can be watched on DVD players. I always thought that i could use Nero to burn these easily and never actually tried but i was wrong. It more complicated than that, you have to first encode the video files into a compatible format and then use another program that allows you to burn these type of files onto DVDs. Thankfully i googled around and discovered DVD Flick which is a freeware that easily does all these for you. Why do i even bother? Despite having a nice 19" widescreen LCD on my comp, theres nothing like kicking back on the couch and watching your favourite shows on a HDTV.

On the down side, a video DVD only holds 120 minutes, whereas a data DVD can store a whole season of shows. It also takes a whole hour to burn one of these babies and they chew up your CPU pretty bad so you are only limited to light activities on your computer.

PC gaming is impossible

I dont know whether the person who assembled the computer (one year old) conned my dad or not, but it really isn't up to my standards. I mean, heck, its even more lousy than the computer i bought three years ago in Melbourne. All the parts in the computer are like the cheapest available and i believe my dad had to pay premium price for it (lucky its company money) Its got the cheapest keyboard on the market, the slowest RAM, intergrated sound and graphics card and USB sockets in the front that doesnt even work. Dont be mistaken, I am very grateful to have a new computer but I would've hoped that my father consulted me before getting the computer because its almost like im changing every part inside of itwhereas it would be much cheaper if it was all in the new computer to start with. The more parts i add in the more harder it is for me to request a newer computer when this one gets outdated, which could be really soon.

Since last year, I've added a graphics card, 1gb of RAM, a new power supply unit, a DVD drive (old one broke) and a new cooling system. The only thing i havent touched is the motherboard and decent hard disk to keep up with current standards.

Having said that, even with all those i can't even run a 2 years++ game on this rig. Im sure it has something to do with the fact that the processor is not dual core, the RAM is still slow and not the highest end graphics card, but with all those money spent i expect to at least run an outdated game well. PC gaming really is impossible these days. Kinda sad really because i really want to experience next-gen games and i dont think my dad will ever approve me of getting a PS3 or xbox360. I probably could buy one with my gaji from the next few months, but i think i better save. Better not let greed take over. My cousin also promised to lend me his PSP for a while so i have more than enough gaming on my hands. Still, its not next-gen but i'll live with that for a while.

Tassie

Its a bit late now to blog about my trips and i might forgotten some things i wanted to say about the place but ill try my best to recall my goldfish memory. For those who didn't know my parents came over for half a month to attend my graduation while having an extended holiday. We decided to spend a few days in Hobart and a day tour through the Great Ocean Road and as usual, produced a wealth of pictures of the beautiful sceneries.

Hobart

Upon arriving in Hobart the first thing that strikes your mind is how beautiful the island is. Its really a very nice sight and very contrasting to the city life in Melbourne, it was very quiet and full of scenery and there is water everywhere. The first thing the cab driver told us was that Hobart is a city of fishes and if you don't like fish, you're at the wrong place. Thankfully im alright with fish, but we would end up eating fish every single day.....mostly at the same place too. But we didn't mind that much, that had a good enough variety of cooking style to keep things fresh for the few days that we were there; i ate lots of salmon, a blue-eyed trevalla, some prawns and a little lobster. They were very fresh but it was still pricey for a place where there's plenty of fish....roughly the same prize you would get them in Melbourne. I guess we were hanging out at a tourist place and as usual they will milk every penny out of you. It was not like we had a choice though, as the city is dead after 5 (literally).


Ahhh... The harbour....source of our very fresh fish

Apart from the usual scenery, there was a few interesting places that stood out during our trip. First was Mount Wellington, which provided a summit view of Hobart. It was pretty high up (cant remember exactly how much) that there was no greenery around, just rocks! But what made it memorable for us (for better or worse) was actually how windy it was out there! We could barely walk straight or stand still for pictures! Just look for yourselves.



Thankfully we didn't get blown away. I even needed my glasses to protect my eyes!

The Wildlife Park (cant remember the name...) was also quite fun surprisingly considering that ive seen koalas and kangaroos many times in my life. For the first time we really got to interact with the animals and even feed the kangaroos. Plus, we got to see the infamous Tasmanian Devil (disappointed that it doesnt spin though).


The cute little creatures were the star of the day

Next up was Bruny Island, which was both exciting and disappointing. We were supposed to go on a cruise to see the landscape of the prehistoric island and to spot some seals, dolphins and whales. What surprised us was the the cruise was actually on a speed boat! Travelling at 25 knots!!! It was cool alright, but it was freezing cold out there! I got seasick too but not as bad as my mom, she threw up into the ocean. Too bad we didn't get to see much for most of the trip, as the whales and dolphins season were over. What a shame. At least we got a great tour guide on the cruise.... he makes the lamest joke, LOL! (rival to Kafaii)


Left: Very dodgy tour guide Right: The most beautiful scenery ever....my DD

Every Saturday in Hobart they hold this umm Salamanca Market they call it. Basically its a huge pasar malam only that its during the day. Makes sense? They sold all kinds of stuff ranging from handicrafts and souvenirs to toys and....lotsa other stuff. I mainly went for the food though; had some german sausages, scallop pie, corn dogs (first time!) but I also managed to grab a sick wooden rubber band gun. But its really dangerous i accidentally shot deedoo with it (SORRY SORRY SORRY DEAR DEAR!!!!). I also shot Jack, but that was no accident =P


Salamanca!!! Got a nice ring to it

So yeah that kinda wraps up our Tassie trip. Oh and yeah before i forget, they make fantastic fudge over there. Yumm Yumm FATNESS!!!!

No More Zapper

My parents came over to Melbourne last week, bringing along what i hoped to be the weapon of mass destruction to flies, the ZAPPER!!!!! (repeat until fades) However, the f-ing customs classified it as a human weapon and confiscated it and the process took about an hour while i waited anxiously outside for my parents to arrive. How are we going to go up against the flies now?

Technical support (my ass!)

Don't you just hate it when you call technical support and they put you in a queue and you just sit and wait there while listening to dodgy repetitive music? Well i've just experienced the worst of it. My problem was simple: my connection was shaped 10 days ago, but shaping period only lasts 7 days. So i called to get my connection back to full speed. (btw shaped means your connection is throttled to 64k speed for using the internet too much, dodgy aint it? unlimited my ass)



Call 1, waiting time 2 hours 15 minutes:
"Your account has no problems. We have released your account since 2 days ago you just need to restart your modem and everything will be OK"
Fuck you, it was still shaped.

Call 2, waiting time 2 hours 30 minutes:
(same dude)"Yes your account is shaped" But a while ago you said that my account was released, i said. "No your account is still shaped" Fuck you a thousand times more, now he's making it sound like i'm the wrong one here. "So you said that you were shaped since last Friday, so do you mean YESTERDAY?" Oh my god you fucking idiot i said it was more than 7 days, can you freaking count? I won't be freaking calling you if i was only shaped for one day! "I will manually unshape you from the list but it will only take effect after midnight so try again tomorrow morning" Fuck you, it was still shaped. Go fuck a wall, thanks for wasting a total of 5 hours last Saturday on the freaking phone with a moron.

Call 3, waiting time 3 hours 55 minutes:
Got disconnected. Fuck you and your whole company. I will spread the word and make sure no one else applied to your dodgy internet service.



Lets do some math. Call 3 was on a Sunday, i called at 10.30am and i was the 7th caller in queue. i managed to reach number 2 before i was disconnected. That means it took them roughly 4 hours to get through 5 people. Their opening hours are 10am-5pm. Thats 7 hours. Without whipping out my ultra cool scientific calculator i can tell thats an estimated 8 people they go through in one day. Ain't that cool? 8 fucking people in one day. Technical support, my ass. I just got off the phone again and they say ill be unshaped in one or two hours time. We'll see about that.

Inspiration

Just got back from my trip in Adelaide, which i am going to blog about later. Jooyee told me about this "Pay Per Post" thingy which i found quite interesting mainly because.....well i get paid for blogging. I dont know how much i'll end up earning or whether ill be earning at all but i've been thinking a lot about my finances recently and while im still feeding off my parents, i feel bad if i have to use their money unnecessarily to buy things to I love ie. basketball gear or video games. Since i have just quit my job recently and looking how stressful third year was, i doubt i want to start work again during fourth year.

So why am I even writing this post? To try to stop my bad habits of having long non-writing periods for my blog, because i want to keep my blog as something interesting to read consistently not just for other ppl but for myself. It was initially meant to be an online journal for me as well. I always have trouble expressing or opening up to other ppl (except certain ppl) about my thoughts and ideas on things happening around the world or things happening around my world. Hopefully ill manage this time.

Ok i half-lied. PayPerPost requires the blog to not have a 30 day non-writing period within the last 90 days. So here's my start. Plus all the things ive mentioned =P

The Stressful Semester

A straightforward topic that says it all. This semester has been crazy for me. I've never had so many things to do in a month, and it just piles up on you until the submission date. I'm talking about design of course. I didn't like the way the second half of the semester is structured cause i had a few problems or faults in my design, but I didn't get the chance of correcting it. It only created more and more stress for me because the faults became more severe as we got more detailed into the design. to make things worst, guest critiques who were supposed to help us with our structure, starting pissing us off by poking our designs instead. Everything built up to a long season of sleepless nights, all-nighters and heart-pumping stress and panic attacks. Non-architectural ppl probably wont understand what im talking about but hey, blogs are for rants and ramblings right? (Maybe)


Source of my pain - Station Pier ferry terminal

Despite that, i managed to pull through thanks to some great support from my family and friends and most important Deedoo who was there for me to encourage me and all the other small things that help reduce my stress. The final presentation wasn't actually too bad, like i said i already knew a few faults in my design and i was ready to take the critism for it. However the critiques were very polite in their speech and they also pointed out a few good things in my design, which is always a huge plus. Overall reward still didnt equal effort, but i am relieved with the way things turned out in the end.

Now, with only 2 exams remaining, im relaxing and studying hard at the same time to make sure i dont fail and graduate and not disappoint my parents when they come over to see me next month. I might sound contradicting putting relax and studying together, but hey after experiencing design this year, studying is relatively relaxing.