got money no ring ring

i waited and i waited. what seemed like a good deal back in August, after being dragged for so long is almost looking like small change only. the deal is most likely off now. well, i have not been lucky in anything i did. even in helping others get cheap stuff also fail. not fated, i think, simply not fated.

IPPT! i failed! YEAH!

I did my IPPT today! hahaha. went to Maju camp to do it today. after a hiatus of, hmmm.... 2 years? for someone not training, i am quite happy with my results. did a 10 second flat for shuttle run, 40 sit ups and 216 for standing broad jump. still can't do pull up though. hahaha. so i did not do the 2.4km run, waste time anyway. but i'm pretty happy with my shuttle run, afterall i did it with a pair of shoes which had crocodile mouths and i was going easy on the shoes when i ran. wow! if i had better shoes, i would have gotten 9 point something! my standing braod jump was a surprise though. my first attempt was 185cm only but on my second attempt, i just leapt and when the PTI announced 216 i was like, eh? wah first time leh. hahahaha. hmm...seems like the weight loss helped. hahahaha. met a very jovial Warrant Officer PTI at the camp. he's going to ROD tomorrow and he was commenting that he is finally seeing his pink IC after 40 something years! wow! hahaha. that's really long service!

one quiz & one project settled

today's 462 quiz was passable. ok, who am i kidding, i was afraid of failing it and was just happy to have passed it. afterall, i had only studied the metrology topics and was only reading through the lithography processes on my way to school.

saw susan today on my way home. was surprised to find her alighting at commonwealth too. had a chat with her and realised she was heading to ikea. nice person. my type too. haha. but goes clubbing too much. anyway, no she is just a schoolmate, so do not let your imagination run wild. she was cherie's neighbour at hall 13 last year, although cherie has since changed her hall.

tomorrow i am taking my IPPT. waste time but stupid mindef keep sending me sms to go take. confirm fail still bug me go and take. haiz.

the quizes are creeping in

alas, the time for the quizes are here. during this 2 weeks, i have 2 projects due and 2 quizes. hectic. it is real tiring doing a 6 man project all by myself. at least going solo really forced me to understand the topic better and also allows me to set my own direction avoiding the pitfalls of groupwork. however, the drawback is that i can not sit back and just wait for others.

after a little close to 2 months, she finally asked me something. of when i would be taking back my mp3 player from her. haiz. why would i want something that would only remind me of someone who rejects me? this past 2 months, we have more than our fair share of brush pasts. each time we would just walk past each other but the eyes don't lie. the look of recognition is there but i have got to stick to what i believe in. dumb but i seriously can not hang around as a friend of someone who rejected me. i don't like the feeling. it's too weird.

final lifeguard duty

today could very well be my final lifeguard duty. after today, i have clocked well over the required 15 hours to have my certificates from my lifesaving course released to me. yeah! i can start on my rescue diver course. today event was the ntu sports club swim fest. while queing to collect food for my fellow lifeguards, i saw alda among the sports club committee. i had only passed her 15 minutes earlier, giving a very hurried "Yo!", while rushing to the pool from lecture. i did not realise that she was headed for the same location too.

the event was pretty dull which is good for us as that means no problems to any participants. us lifeguards then took it upon ourselves to entertain ourselves. i dived into the dive pool several times to wet myself. eugene and i chatted and stoned during the event. i took out my camera to take some shots but as i was on duty, i am not allowed to take photos of my charges. in the end, we took photos of ourselves. hahahaha.

the sports club gave each of us a goodie bag as a token of appreciation for us coming down to provide lifeguard support. they also gave each of us an event singlet but as they only had M size left, i was left with no other choices. when i looked at it later, it was so small, it seemed almost like a sports bra! hahahaha i will not be caught dead in it unless i slim down more or i could give it to my girlfriend as and when i have one.

goodbye benedict

benedict has just flown off to Bochum, Germany to pursue his PhD. he is the second guy among us airguys who is pursuing a PhD. all the best to him and his studies. we look foward to his return during his holidays and revile us with his conquests in germany.

an afternoon at east coast park

spent the afternoon with the dive group at east coast park today. people present were Alda, Alex, Alvin Loke, Alvin Ho, Andy, Belinda & Bernerd. 5 A's Vs 2 B's. haha. belinda had graciously went down to ntu to pick up the hall people and in the process inadvertently picked up Alvin Loke the "BBDC intstructor". bednerd and i made our own way to east coast. he on his motorbike, me by my trusty bikey. took me about 40 mins to reach east coast park from bukit merah.

i entered east coast park via fort road and changed out of my jeans to bermudas. after giving a call to alvin to check their location, i proceeded to meetup with them. along the way, i passed vincent wu who was rollerblading at east coast too. moments later, i noticed belinda coming in my direction but her attention was on something else in front of her. i waved and only after i passed her then did she realised it was me. as i did not notice the guys on my way, i guess they must be lagging behind so i stopped to wait for them. later i found out what had captured belnida's attention. apparently she, alda & alex were chasing after vincent wu and wanted to take a photo with him. haiz. starry-eyed young girls. haha.

alvin is new to rollerblading and was moving very very slowly. i tried to pace him and even tried towing him along. it sure wasn't easy towing people and i had to change to a lower gear to better handle bikey. when bernerd later tagged on, i think alvin suddenly lost balanced and lurched foward, causing me to lose balance and braking. ooohh. alvin nearly had no chance of celebrating father's day. ouch! we continued to move on and later headed towards the food centre. along the way, alda was very encouraging to alvin and tried to aid him in his rollerblading technique. we soon stopped at the food centre for some deserts and chicken wings. alex while transporting the chicken wings from the stall, lost his balanced and dropped the wings on the floor. oh no! thankfully he was ok, we could always get new chicken wings later. as alvin and andy had returned their rollerblades, they set off for belinda's car first by foot. in the meanwhile, the rest of us went down to bedok jetty for some photos and rest. while we passed mcdonald's on our way back, we passed an ambulance. apparently somebody had a very nasty fall. poor thing. after a quick wash up, we adjourned to the beach for a rest where we decided to head to marine parade food centre, next to parkway parade.

taking the underpass, while the rest travelled by road, i managed to reach the place just ahead of them. seeing that there were 7 of us, we had to split to 2 separate tables. alda, alvin, belinda & myself were at one while alex, andy & berdnerd were at the other. our table was full of sharing as we bought food for each other to share or as belinda puts it, our tablle is so full of love. heez! chee cheong fun, chwee kuay, char kway teow, char tau kuay, fried fish soup, sugar cane juice, soya bean grass jelly mix. by the time my main course of pork mixture porridge arrived, i was pretty stuffed. hahaha. it's more fun when we buy and share. eating with girls are an added bonus besides the obvious eye candy. they sometimes can not finish their food and you can have extras. no wonder i so fat! hahaha.

after dinner we shopped around for a while for alda to get some snacks as dinner at her hostel. snacks as dinner? we discussed our plans for the following week of where we could relax. from labrador park to fort canning park to marina south to batam to pulau ubin and even space! hahaha. it sure was intrsting. especially since "mehmet" invited berdnerd to go to turkey. hahaha. in the end we settled for macritchie reservoir's tree top walk and pinic, plus some fishing. sounds great! i'm looking foward to it already. we soon bade farewell and i started my journey home. with a stop over at my mum's place at bukit purmei, by the time i reached my granny's place i had taken about an hour.

today was sure a good way to relax after a hectic week at ntu and we didn't have to spend much at all. this bunch is sure a great group to hang with. kind of reminds me of my bygone days in poly year 1. thanks gal & guys! looking foward to our meetup next sat. see ya!

lifeguard duty at NTU's mid-autumm festival

just came home from lifeguard duty at the ntu mid-sutumm festival event. they had an event at nanyang lake where participants were invited to place floating laterns with their wishes on it into the lake. when i first got the duty i was thinking what the? they scared people fall into the lake isit? the lake is very shallow. anyway, the event was pretty hilarious as those floating lanterns were flimsy pieces of styrofoam with some wires and colored paper. some floated but majority overturned. by the time the event ended, there were alot of overturned lanterns in the lake. tsk tsk. during the event we were given some lucky draw coupons to fill up. i filled up 8 but did not win at all. haiz......no luck and i was hoping for an iron only. hahaha.

somebody from my polytechnic past

when i went to help my mum carry stuff back from bukit merah central today, i saw a very familiar figure. as i was pushing the trolley back to the NTUC trolley bay, i passed this gal strolling along and i was thinking, cute. then eh? familiar leh. when i went to the taxi stand later, i saw the same gal at the taxi stand. from behind, i was thinking, oooh babe! in case u are wondering, she is thin, petite but with nice flowing curled long hair. i like. hahaha. then on closer look, OH MY GOD. it is Ziwei, my poly classmate!

ok, i admit it, i was intrested in her very much back when we were in Singapore Polytechnic and we were very close too but her boyfriend and now husband is my good friend from poly too. back then, alphanumeric pagers were the in thing. i sent her many messages, encouragements and congratulatory messages, without saying who i was and even offered to help her find out who the mysterious "IP", that's what we called the "mysterious" (me lah) guy, is. alas, i was too chicken to even tell her i liked her, even though i was the first to befriend her in my class. in the end, i wished her well and told her that she could always come to me if she needed help.

ever since she got married out of poly, no it was not shotgun, she has been pretty distant. when once we could chat non-stop, there is now a barrier. i last saw her last year together with her husband at bukit batok driving center. even then, i did not even get a word out of her and spoke only to her husband. today, when i realised who it was, i kept looking at her, hoping she could recognise me. everytime i see her, she justs gets prettier and prettier. i think she might have recognised me or think that who is this weirdo staring at her for after a while, she whipped out her mobile phone and called somebody and started chatting, not looking in my direction. when i finally boarded the taxi, i looked back and saw her looking in my direction. i wonder if she really did recognise me and if she did, why is she looking away?

oops, i got caught

haha. no it is not anything illegal. eveyrday, when i have the chance, especially during my common lectures with her, i would steal glances at her. sounds pathetic but hey, since when do you not steal glances at someone you like? thing is today, while stealing a glance at her direction in lecture, her "sister" happened to be looking at my direction, oops! hahaha.

the day had started out well enough, seeing her in lab. ok, we still had not spoken since that pseudo-phonecall. when lab finished, i was surprised to see her waiting for the elevator. usually, if i exited the lab together at about the same time, she would have walked off via the stairs. hmmm......should i have taken the elevator? i was disappointed to find out that her entire lab group missing from the next lab session. ah well. later on in lecture, as i was approaching indra, i did not noticed that she was but 2 rows behind him. i felt some pretty strong vibes coming from her diretion and only realised where she was sitting when i directed my attention at the source of the vibes. i tried to make sense of what the vibes meant but did not dwell on it as my senses were dulled due to the lack of sleep the night before. was she willing to thaw her attitude towards me or was it more like, "STAY AWAY!" hmmm......

maybe it was the sense of lost of not seeing her in the lab, i sort of behaved weirdly in lab. i started to place my hand on both my female groupmates head, for reasons of fun. i realised that one of them had very nice hair quality and was tempted to touch her scalp more often but my other male groupmate akin it to stroking a dog. tsk tsk. people got good hair quality, that is why i touch. haiz. hahaha. she then arranged a time to meet up with me during the week to settle some groupwork and thretened to hunt me down and "kill" me if i do not turn up. i then warned her not to be too fierce to me or i will start to fall for her. hahahaha. sounds weird right but it is true. i got a penchant for sassy gals, else why would i still have feelings for someone whom i have not spoken to since July last year?

i got a visitor i was hoping but never expected

after i had posted up my photos on to the photo website, i had sent the invitations out to some people whom i have never spoken to for a long time. one and a half years to be exact. to my delight, one of them actually came to view! ooohhh so happy so happy! hahahaha! ok, maybe she had clicked on the link to just see what rubbish it was all about but that she was willing to click the link, it's like wow! i am not hoping for anything but maybe the freezing status between us is about to thaw? i do hope so, for she is really the nicest female i have ever known. no offence to my other female counterparts but when it come to temper and compassion, she's the best i have ever known. she personifies all the good a human can be. really. to think i went all out to screw the relationship last year is plain stupidity, an action i have regreted very much. alas, she's now happily attached. her boyfriend is one lucky fellow if you ask me. before i knew her, i never knew that such a wonderful person existed. after i knew her, i have not met any who is her match. if i did not screw thing up last year, you never know. hiaz......

regrets, i've had a few,
but then again, too few to mention

school blues

back to school after a one week term break. time flies when you are slacking. woke up bright and early today wanting to cycle to school but the skies were not kind. in the end i opted to return to school by public transport. with the monsoon coming in hard and fast, i decided to opt for public transport for the next month at least. man, no exercise will definately contribute to me ballooning back to my original size, got to find a way to maintain my new found physique. already, someone mentioned to me today that my face seemed to have rounded over the term break. oh no!

today seemed to be a day when by a twist of fate, when i happened to think of a certain person and that person would appear moments later. i had taken a short trip to jurong regional library in between classes to get some books for my m428 project. on the bus, my handphone reminder went off to let me know of cherie's birthday on wednesday. i shook my head and deleted the reminder. while alighting from the bus at boon lay, i thought i saw a pretty well dressed cherie sitting near the bus exit. hmmm...whatever, it's over. later when i reached back to school, i heard someone use the word "bang" and immediately alda came up in my mind. sorry, alda, your heavy usage of the word "bang" leaves a very lasting impression. heez. moments later, when i left the library, i was thinking of some other things, and did not notice someone waving at me. when i finally realised someone was waving at me, i looked up and saw alda. hmmm..... when i finished my next lecture, i was just musing to myself about how karen is today. i was passing this very big crowd but for reasons unbeknownst to me, i looked over my shoulder and, lo and behold, i made eye-contact with karen. ooohh. i quickly turned my head around without breaking my stride and carried on moving. ok. too much excitement for one day. no more thinking of females for the time being. hahahaha.

eat, drink & make merry with my new diving mates

it was a cool saturday evening when 7 people gathered for a meal at Suntec City's Marché restaurant. arriving at 7.49pm, i thought i was late but was wrong. berdnerd had arrived moments before me and the rest were still some minutes away. andy soon arrived and we started messaging the rest to check where they were and got a very cheeky reply from belinda. "Count to 100 and you will see me." in a way we just looked at our watches and she did not appear till it was 120 seconds. Hahaha. moments later Alvin and Alda soon arrived. the guys were actually partially full when we came so we just dragged our feet looking at the various food available. we all agreed to get some stuff and share, splitting the bill even thereafter. raymond soon joined us and we began our hearty meal. there were some recaps of their adventures on wednesday night at zouk, of how somebody got named sissyboy. alda, being the innocent little lady (she still not 21), used the term bang very liberally, wanting it to mean collision but erm...the rest of us had another image. by the time belinda explained to her the alternative and more generally used meaning, she was like, oops! hahahaha. throughout the meal, we had great fun laughing at each other's mistakes and taking friendly swipes at each other. (ooh point to note to HSBC credit card holders, 20% off the bill when paying with your HSBC credit card)

Food for 8 people at Marché

after our meal, we decided to take a stroll over to brewerkz to chill. it also helps us to digest our meal. we went through citylink mall and turned towards connaught drive and up to the WW1 memorial. along the way, we noticed a very familiar bus. it was the bus that used to be the internal shuttle service of NTU. alda got so excited and wanted belinda to take a photo with her. haiz.....

2 Ladies & Their Internal Shuttle Service

The view of the marina square skyline from the Lim Bo Seng memorial was pretty good and i could not resist stopping to take a shot of it. sorry for holding you all up.

Skyline of Marina Square

i quickly caught up with the group who were waiting for me at the deserted tunnel linking the asian civilization museum and lim bo seng memorial. i noticed how the tunnel looked like one of my design modules picture and that it looked pretty good for a group shot.

Deserted Underpass Tunnel

Andy, Travis, Alvin, Belinda, Alda, Raymond & Berdnerd

the group were mentioning that there was no difference in belinda's voice although it supposedly had lost the huskiness factor. she claims to have recovered partially from her sore throat but it seems that her voise has not changed much, to me that is. as we passed indochine at the asian civillization museum, i was mesmorized by the singing coming from the lounge. i suggested to the group that the music was pretty good and it would be a good place to chill out. alas, there was a private function going on and we could not gatecrash. so we continued strolling on to clarke quay with raymond and alda involved in some sort of friendly dissing and kept running in circles around us. hahaha. while we were crossing the road next to parliament house, berdnerd noticed a caucassian trying to take a peek at alda's skirt as she sashayed across the road. oooh, nasty. hahaha.

we all stopped at the reverse bungy thing at clarke quay to kaypoh a bit, looking at how it's like. my verdict after looking at it? not worth the $20 for it. i rather save up for my skydiving qualification. passing hooters, we were commenting how that the singapore version was very dissappointing compared to their usa counterparts. hmmm...in what way, go figure. hahaha. at this point, andrew called travis and said that he has arrived at millenia walk. we were like, WHAT! how could he mix up robertson quay with millenia walk. hahaha. travis told him to hury up and meet us at brewerkz.

by the time we reached brewerkz, we were pretty tired from the walk and quikly got seats. i managed to get myself a seat that was facing the screen showing the charlton vs chelsea match. berdnerd was struggling the entire time not to turn his head to look at the screen. hahaha. tough luck. we wanted to go with a tower of berr but with their towers all out, we decided to go with jugs. we started with wheat ale & golden ale. it was pretty ok, although i have to agree that wheat ale was pretty light. by the time we finished the first 2 jugs, andrew soon found us. belinda asked berdnerd if he wanted to sniff her snowball drink, claiming it smelt like puke. berdnerd was going what the?! but we soon passed her drink around and had a sniff and sip each. later, we took the stalk from the cherry from her glass and was mentioning that some people could tie a knot with their tongue. travis proceeded to try and he did it. kowtow kowtow. the first 2 jugs were soon finished and we tried oktoberfest and indian pale ale. oktoberfest was nasty! andy could not take the smell of it, claiming it to be too strong. jeremy joined us soon thereafter. the topic kept changing about, from somebody's infatuation with somebody, to each of our perculiar diving habits. it was a laugh recalling out dive trip. the mass orgy dive was the most intresting. alex was always at an inclined angle during the dive and alvin could never find him, even when he checked all around including between his legs. how andy got lost during his navigation dive. my phototaking moments were really breathtaking. hahaha. i practically slammed onto the seabed, causing sand and silt to kick up like a helicopter landing, each time i was positioning to take a shot then proceeded to take off again. it was really a blast hanging with the group. (ooh another point to note to AMEX credit card holders, 15% off the bill when paying with your AMEX credit card)

View of Clarke Quay & a Shadow Walkon

Standing (Left to Right): Belinda, Berdnerd, Raymond & Alda
Seated (Left to Right): Travis, Andy, Andrew, Alvin & Alvin

by the time we were done it was 1.45am. we bade farewell and there were mentions of an east coast park outing next weekend. we never know, what with school starting again tomorrow but if it is on and i got nothing on, i would go. i began my trek home from robertson quay to my home in bukit merah, a one hour walk. it was ok, helped to burn off some of the calories from all the food and drinking tonight. it was really a night where we ate, drank and made merry.

more diving stuff

oooh....i forgot to add two very important things i saw on our return from the island to mainland malaysia. i saw a pair of whale sharks from afar from the deck of the ferry. the instructors pointed it out to us and we saw their dorsal fins from afar. everybody on the top deck saw it. and not only that, we also saw a dolphin too. yup. somebody screamed DOLPHIN! and we looked. wow it looked really graceful arching out of the water. i could not get a shot off as it only surfaced once. but it was really really beautiful. rarely u see wild dolphins and wild whale sharks! this was really a very eventful trip.

i'm back!

after a hiatus of one week, i'm finally back blogging. hahaha. many apologies to the few who spent their precious time clicking on my link to see if i had anything new to say. after i returned from my diving trip on Monday, i fell ill and could not even roll off my matress till yesterday morning. yes, i was very badly sick.

the diving trip to dayang was a great success. the bus journey was surprisingly fast. we got to mersing before 11pm. my roomates were a couple and another guy doing advanced open water course. i didn't interact with them much. i'm not the social kind. i met my fellow dive group mates the next morning. Jeannie, Andy, Daniel, Isaac and myself. we had a very experienced and jovial instructor, richard. our dive group was pretty small, of about 5 people, so it allowed us more flexibility to do more things. our check-out dive was refreshing. after a whole year away from diving, going back down again was simply amazing. i missed the feeling so much!

during the checkout dive, richard brught us around and helped fine-tune our diving skills. On the second dive, we went drift diving. this is where we "ride" the current and go where the current brings us. it was really an exciting experience. it was like woo hooo. hahah! got in a lot of photos. richard even caught a small clown fish and placed it in his mask. hahaha. it was so intresting! we then came up close to a jellyfish. attack of the killer jellyfish more like it, as it was heading for daniel's direction. i did not relise it was there till andy pulled on my fin to signal it to me. seeing the fishes swim in and out of the jellyfis was really intresting. i even got a video clip of it.

Richard With Clown Fish In Mask

KILLER JELLYFISH!

our third dive was the navigation dive. Isaac, Jeannie and myself did ok. Andy, somehow disappeared and we went searching for him but could not find him. he later claimed that he had went down to 30meters depth and realised that he must have been lost, so he did a safety stop and deployed his safety "sausage" before surfacing. haha, talk about kiasuism. Daniel did not fare any better either. well, it could partialy be my fault as i was supposed to accompany him on his square navigation route. the rest of us had chosen to take right turn but he wanted to do left turns. so when i tried to correct him, he got confused and we ended up losing richard, jeannie and isaac. after searching around for a while, i signaled to daniel to surface to try to look for them. when we surfaced, i suggested we descend for another search, and if we could not find them, we head for our boat. he agree and goes our search. in a way, we were pretty lucky, after a brief search, we managed to find them. richard was like, where you guys been? hahahaha.

our night dive was really a very exhirllarating experience. before going down, richard had briefed us on his objective and it was to find the giant sea turtle. when we went in, we turn on our lights and started moving, things really look very different at night. you could hear alot more sounds too. after moving for some time, we were starting to head back when, lo and behold, we found the turtle! it was sleeping when we found it. we approached it slowly and patted and stroked it. hahaha. it was a really intresting experience. we were lucky the turtle did not snap at us. i tried to get some shots off but it was too dark, even at maxumum exposure. after a while the turtle was like, i wanna sleep, and started to take off. at that moment i was hovering right in front of it, i tried to get out of its way but was too slow and got a resounding slap on my cheek by its fin. OW! hahahaha. i managed to get a shot of said fin though.

The Turtle Fin That Slapped ME!

Dawn Over South China Sea

our dawn dive was another eye opener for me. we got up at about 6.45am and i managed to get off a shot of the rising sun. it was so beautiful. highlight of our dawn dive was that we found the white-tip reef shark at 35meters depth! we found a pair of them resting below a rock. in the frenzy when everyone wanted to get a look, i could not get a proper shot with all the sand and silt kicked up. damn. but it was really fun to have seen the sharks. if i stretched, i believed i could have touched its tail but i want my hand so i did not. hahaha. later on we did some deep diving mental exercises. we all did 9x9 and 9+9. hmmm...wondered if jeannie was under the effect of nitrogen narcosis. us guys all answered 9x9 as 81 but she answered it as 48. hmmm.... hahahahaha. our next morning dive brought us close to some squids. we also had the chance to swim alongside a school of juvenile barracudas. oooh. it was really a thrill to swim next to the barracudas. as long as they are in a school, we are safe. the moment the barracudas are alone, it is hunting, super not safe. for when a barracuda attacks, it can be as fierce as a shark, with its razor sharp teeth, it could just bite off anything. that's why those wearing ear-studs were advised to take them off as barracudas are attracted to shiny objects. one moment ear stud, next moment half ear left. oooh.....bloody! thankfully no such thing happened during our trip. during our safety stop before surfacing, i suddenly realised my camera had brken off from my suit and had floated away. i was like. OH SHIT! i tried looking around but could not find it. when we broke surface, i searched but still could not see it. we signalled to the boat crew and they managed to see it. THANK HEAVENS! losing the camera would have caused me much monetary grief and loss of photos too. once we returned to shore, i quickly booted up my laptop and proceeded to transfer all the photos into the laptop. at lunch time we bade farewell to richard. he along with a few other instructors were there only for the weekend and had work on monday so they left on Sunday afternoon. he congratulated us on our succeful completion of our course. we are now Advanced Open Water Divers!

When did I become so slim?

the 2 leisure dives we had in the afternoon were great fun and comical too. some mis-read hand signs. bumping of air tanks and the wrong way of deploying the safety sausage. but it was great fun, especially when we went on the drift diving. the current was really strong and we moved really fast. it was really thrilling! we even came up close to a stingray! i have the video footage and picture footage as proof! hah! i quickly got off the shots before people start kicking up the sand again. hahahah. the time honored tradition of passing the course was here again. we gathered out belonging and placed it on the deck. the boat moved to within the shoreline and we all "walked-the plank"! haha. more like we all jumped off the boat's bow. woohoo! when we all walked on to the shore, the scene was reminiscent of the movie land of the living dead. hahahah!

as dayang was pretty desolated, it had only the accomodation, cookhouse and diving equipment store, there was not much entertainment. so we made our own. indra and thomas wrestled on the beach, eric did a pole dance in front of everybody! hahaahh! and later on people were even grabbed and thrown into the sea! thankfully i had went into my room by then and had locked the room door. they even came to my room trying to get me, phew! next time fellas.

Eric Gets Ready!

Go Eric Go Eric Go!

this trip was really fun and i made friends with a couple of great people! maybe next year when i return for a leisure dive. more friends? hahaha.

Alvin the Advanced Open Water Diver

a diving i am go

currently hanging out at canteen b waiting for everyone to arrive. they are doing a roll call now. soon we will be on our way. after all the personal bullshit i put myself through, it's good to get away for a while. i'll be back on monday. till then, take care people. oh and byt the way, happy housewarming malcolm & eileen. sorry i can't come.

human behavior in times of adversity

It is a natural human tendency to fear what we do not know and not bother to find out about it. Also, humans like to feel good about themselves and not want to face reality when it faces them. Such complacency has resulted in the confusion and mayhem that has besieged New Orleans currently. Even in adversity, many of the residents did not see the need to evacuate when ordered by the Governor. This has resulted in many of them being left stranded. The lucky ones could escape to the roof and await rescue, the unlucky ones drowned in their homes. Such reliance for rescue has also shown overdependence on governmental aid, which currently is really more of a downside for the residents. Their refusal to leave even when rescue arrives has required the order of forced eviction. Sentimental reason for some of losing their homes but for others, it is their obsession of accumulating material wealth and the sudden loss of it that has resulted in them making judgements which are adverse to their well-being. The immediate task at hand of rescuing the residents has been overshadowed by the politicians squabbling over minute details such as who should lead a commission to pinpoint responsibility, resulting in delays of aid reaching the victims. Even a superpower like USA, requires the aid of other countries when the wrath of Mother Nature strikes. No man is an island and no country is too. Aid from various countries has poured in. Singapore has sent in the aid of its Chinook detachment in Texas. Sri Lanka, a victim of the Tsunami disaster, has also pledge a sum of money to aid reconstruction efforts. However, many of such aid have been prevented from arriving in New Orleans by bureaucratic red tape. The victims are all in dire need of aid and yet due to such uncompromising behaviour from governmental agencies, more of them are going to suffer and more are going to die. This fear of dying has resulted in widespread mayhem, looting and rumour mongering all over New Orleans. With the situation fast getting out of hand, the soldiers and police have been given the order to shoot if needed. The victims are now still in a state of shock & confusion, with many of the injured not receiving any aid, more casulties are feared. Until the politicians can settle their petty differences and for the various governmental agencies to start coordinating their efforts in receiving foreign aid, the effort required to recover from Katrina will be even more monumental than from the Tsunami disaster of last year.

packing for the trip

yeah. tomorrow's my trip. after a hiatus of one year, i'm finally going diving again. oooh can't wait. i'm packing my bags for the trip. so happy so happy! hahaha!

ok, i admit, all the above is a bloody facade. just as a year ago, again, this year, I'm going diving when my relationship problems are in the dumps. man, is this going to happen to me everytime i go diving?

the first term has come and gone. there were a couple of plus and minus. well, a big plus was that, although by accident, i finally had a pseudo-conversation with her after a year. wow! that's very very long.

my mind has basically wind down since tuesday after the quiz. guess it was tuning down for the term break. haha. if the mind is so capable.

i went to the pasar malam with chee keong after lecture today. one thing we noticed, although the food stalls took up about 20% of the ground space, it had 80% of the crowd. hmmm....maybe i should consider opening a food stall next time but the bloody rental is $800 a day i think. so expensive, really makes one reconsider.

Blood ALERT!

My timetable is filled with breaks here and there. During my 2 hour break, Malcolm mentioned to me that he is going to donate blood at the NTU blood donation drive. I went down there to accompany him as i had nothing better to do.

being a "virgin" at blood donation, he seemed calm. stage one started with him filling up a questionaire about his current health condition and registration into the HSA database of blood donors. stage two, the doctor, or medical officer, went through the questions with him to ensure that he knows what he is about to do. a simple check of temperature and blood pressure was done. stage three, he was pricked on the finger, where upon the nurse, took some of the blood and dripped it into a flask of some bluish liquid. i forgot what that process is for, just that the blood drop must sink to qualify to donate.

stage four is when the main donation process starts. when he approached the chair, he sat on the side of it. He was apprehensive in lying down till the nurse told him to. see lah, ask you lie down, don't want lah, now kenna scolding liao. hahaha. throughout the process, he seemed very tense. i told him to relax and there was nothing to fear. the nurse soon came around, injected some local anaestethic before proceeding to insert the "big" needle in. the nurse even complimented him on havin good and clear arteries/vein. however, halfway during the process, his blood flow seem to come to a stop. he panicked. hahaha. the nurse came over and pushed the needle further in. she had to as his blood was pooling under his skin and was blocking the flow of the blood. the sight was bloody. eeeee! by the time he was done, when the nurse removed the needle, his elbow was flooded with blood. the nurse helped him to clot it and clean up the mess. a bruise was starting to form and a cold compress was needed on the site to reduce the swelling.

he was like, "oh man, why like that. aiyoh, why so sway!" hahaha. he truly very sway. his facial expressions were really comical. too bad i did not have my digital camera to catch his facial expressions. it was a laugh. hahahaha. but still at least he is doing something that 98% of you singaporeans are not doing. he had the guts to go donate blood. what about you?

late night quiz

had my m363 quiz only at 9pm today. it was so late as i was taking the quiz with the part timers. the part timers class was so cosy, only 8 people including me. we had a comical cloud question.

a picture of 3 clouds was shown, listing to one side. it is indicated that the clouds are in the atmospheric boundary layer. the question ask the testee to indicate the direction of the cloud movement and explain why. i answered that the clouds are moving from right to left. this is because at the base of the boundary layer, velocity is zero. as the lower end of the clouds are closer to the base, therefore the velocity is lower than the top edge of the cloud. thus, with the lower end moving slower, it trails the top end of the cloud. therefore the clouds are moving from right to left.

the other question was a bit more tedious due to the ,ultiple integration. overall, i felt the test was doable and i hope i pass. heeez. don't want to repeat the module again.

de ja vu

i went to school by MRT today. while alighting from the MRT i saw her in the MRT. hwah! de ja vu leh. last year when i had problems with Joyce, days after i sent her the letter, i saw her on the MRT. fast foward to one year later, after the decision to "let go", i see her on the MRT. almost the exact same scenario. haiz.

out of air in the pool?!

i went through the diving pool session today. it was beneficial for me as i had not dive in a year and going through the session together with the newbies, like indra & roy, allowed me to learn alot. my instructor told me he would not me looking after me, so i was mainly just an audience but i still went through the motions with the guys. initially, we had a divemaster assisting my instructor. however as another group was short of a divemaster too, my instructor sent him over to aid the other group. then i was asked to help out with the newbies with their skills. wow! it was like, so enlightening. hahaha. i really learned alot just by helping the newbies fine-tune their skills. in the process, my own skills got fine tuned too. i'm going to work towards being a qualified divemaster, maybe even towards instructor certification someday. but for now, i'm just going to concentrate on getting my advanced certification first.

quickie 5 hr in JB

dun let your mind run wild. i did not go into JB for any tryst. i went in to get some stuff. when i left singapore, the singaporean immigration officer was like, eyes raised and looked at me. apparently, i look very different from my passport photo. hahahahaha. at the custom checkpoint on JB side, the queues were literally at a standstill. sad to say, the ugly singaporean was there as well. why? it was beacause i don't know how on eart a single queue can have three tails. by the time i realised this, i switched queue. tsk tsk. took me 25mins to clear the JB customs. haiz. i quickly got down to do what i want to do and got out of JB by 6.45pm. on my return to the woodlands checkpoint, the same thing happened again. again i was scrutinized by the immigration officer. she even went, Alvin? hahahaha. oh my, i don't think i changed that much right? went through the detectors with no problems but was questioned by the staff sergeant on duty about my vitamins. ah well, nothing to hide there.

i'm now preparing to leave for the airport to fetch my mum back. actually, it is nothing more than just a taxi ride. afterall, i did not ask my uncle if i could borrow his vehicle. if my mum really bought the trinklet she told me she would for "her" birthday, should i give it to "her"?

overnighter at NTU

i was attending the open water diver theory class last night with indra and roy. even though i did not need to attend it as i had cleared my open water diver course, as i had not dived in a year, i felt it would be beneficial to me to go throw the basics again to refresh myself. little did i know the lesson to end only at 2.30am! chosing not to take the taxi home, we found ourselves a cozy stone ledge, just outside LT 1A next to the staircase, and slept till this morning about 6am. I just reached home about 10 mins ago. i'm feeling very very sleepy. i got to catch some shut eye now. my mum's touching down just after midnight tonight, got to go fetch her. yawn.

Finally, FYP laboratory work begins

i finally began my experiments for my FYP afte lagging behind so long to do literary review. cleaned the silicon wafer, putting it through the photolithography process, developing it, all pretty intresting stuff. finally some work is done.

i packed the one half of the matching pair of MP3 players i bought together with her back in february and gave it to her. she asked me why. why? for closure i guess. i told her she can see it as safe keeping it for me and give it to me when our relationship improves. there is only one way for our relationship to improve and if it doesn't, i gave her the option of doing what she deems fit with it.

happy teachers' day to all the teachers and lecturers out there!