Final year log #1

Is it always so true that you will apprecriate things so badly, only when you are losing it....

Now that I have accustomed to life here, it felt so nostalgic just to walk on the streets. My greatest challenge has yet to be what I'm going to do the next few years. It is pathetic to find out millions were spent to send students overseas and not having a plan for them when they return. It is like spending a lot of money buying a super computer and place it in your house. You'll be like : 'Yea, we have super computers too!', but you never bother to find out how to use it. 

I don't know how Malaysian press portray the weather conditions in Europe now, but for my mum, it definitely seems like we are having a 2012 rehearsal here. To me, it is pure excitement. Every Malaysian got to love snow, because it is the thing we never have.

Heavy snowfalls instantly turned the world outside to be white..

Something like this.

Certainly it's white and magical this season, Merry Christmas !!

Final year

This is my 4th and final year in London! Previously, I've seen my flatmate travelling to and fro with small little luggages. I hate bulky and heavy luggages. Adding to the fact that I have to take a tube, walk back to my flat and thanks to BBC weather giving me a warning of HEAVY rain, I've got to challange myself really light this year. Furthermore, its the last year in London, what is more to carry from Malaysia ??

Things in my luggage before I add in my OWN belongings...

After I packed in everything I need to bring.

Record low! 13kg is all I am going to bring this year!

If you are wondering, this is the size of my luggage! I love it, small and swift, I can get through the silly bars from Heathrow to tube station easily.

The 3-PPrinciples of Life

In a open-minded society, there are a few things that young people like us would do to have fun. Back then, a few of my friends in Imperial came to derive the 3 ultimate principles for a man's enjoyable life (well applicable to ladies too I guess). It is named the 3P.... (not as dirty as you think it is, but yet dodgy enough).

3P in this case stands for (po, pek pok) in canto, dont ask me, my Hk friend taught me! haha

The first P 'po', means to go chill out, hang out and party. This I presume many youngsters love to go for events, parties and outings after hard work or lecture. It's easy, especially when you are not staying at home, you could just ask your mates : " Yo! tonight where to po? ". Don't you agree? You get to chill, watch movies, chat, play games, hit on opposite sexes and throw all the worries away. We all do that.

Second P stands for 'pek'. In malaysian canto, it means to slash or chop. It is also widely used to mean 'drinking alcohol'. Normally pek doesn't mean gentle drinking, it means drinking crazily. Whether you are challenging each other for alcohol tolerance or simply want to get someone wasted, we say we go 'pek'... Alcohol breaks the ice, boosts confidence (on stupid stuffs), makes you a dancer and reveals one inner self. Always a good tool to bond with your mates! Maybe you won't agree with drinking regularly, but once a while, it's exhilarating and takes away all the stress.. =)

Third P... pok.. It doesn't mean getting a plank and knock someone.. it means 'shag' . Don't get it? Have sex! Enough said.

So, which P are you on ?

Summer 2010

People tend to leave blog and turn to facebook, but sometimes I still prefer blogging as I can write more stories and thoughts and leave the stupid comments and likes behind. (you like this?)

Summer, the most wonderful season among the four. I begin to love it so much but soon I wouldn't have anymore left.

Four seasons view out my window. Autumn 2009

Spring

Summer

My 3rd summer holidays has come to an end. Often, I feel lost in time and space, I always mess up with things that happened last summer or last last summer. Every summer I expected I would achieve a little more, but each summer, I did less and less.

This summer, I promised myself to get an internship and gain work experience, but 3 months passed and I regretfully couldn't recall what I really did. I turned down a 3 months internship offer with IBM and that was all the I got. Similarly, from landing in KL to --> spicy --> to gathering with Kepong gang... movies, football ended my July. Then, from Yiew Wen's birthday to Kim Hung and then Tsi Ngar's birthday, from more Old Town and Spicy to Murni, occasionally a night out at Sky Bar... Finally Zk's leaving to Moscow, and thats August. September, I didnt even spend much time back home. Last year I went to London for 2 weeks and this year I was in far far away land to visit princesses. In blink of eye, that's dai gar je's birthday and farewell for everybody! (always couldn't celebrate dai lou's birthday)

Lovely ladies @ Sky Bar !

Wil Liam's house BBQ night. Night where all the theories and effects were founded. See miss Yee, haven't finish biting her  chicken wing, now hold a plate of prawns pula.

I am excited for London. I used to hate flying back; by the time I learned to appreciate, its already my final year. How I wish I could re-live my rotation of UK for 9 months and 3 months holiday in Malaysia for a few more years... Argh people, dont be emo when you fly back to UK... after all, you will be home one day, but you wont get to stay in UK as a student that often; or should I say, that opportunity is only for this one time.

I miss my dear coursemates, being classmates for 2 years is really short!

Project Presentation Day.

One of the memorable K-night out!

Happy autumn term people! Time to start work!

For those who are looking for a job, good luck and may the next fucking employer appreciates what we studied as a BioEngineer!

Its spring!

I don't feel like going home...

Its been a nostalgic exam month, after that, I will not see most of my mates here anymore.
Sad thing is nobody got a job offer yet...
Oh, exam is the best diet plan to me... so far 2 weeks 1kg gone!
I think I'm too whinny..

Time should slow down

Examinations are pointless at this stage of life. It doesn't give any incentives or measure of achievement, its just a procedure. So give up!

To chill out during revision, my housemate likes to drink coke..

Apart from all this shit, there was a little weird incident that happened few days ago..

We ordered a delivery of groceries from Iceland (not the place with volcano). Then the driver came, one lady was standing in our front yard and she claimed those groceries. The driver thought she was one of the tenants as she was standing on our dooryard playing with our neighbour's dog. Later on we called because our groceries haven't arrived and the driver told us this story.

Groceries thief ? We suspected our neighbour because the driver said she was playing with the dog laying on the fence. His description of the lady appears like our neighbour. We knocked the door, and she only talked to us through a slit... Of course she denied it. Well we got our groceries back and we didnt care, the driver was angry.

Oh I went to vote for UK general elections yesterday! I feel more like a resident here. It was really fast, it took one minute to go in, cross out and put in the box.

Term ends again

As we grow older, our perception of time becomes faster... Its true!

I didn't feel like I had live through my 3rd year here. I had only vague memory of what I did. Fortunately I could still reminisce from my previous post with a photo a day. I didn't even manage to continue in that project in my 2nd term.

I couldn't recall how I'd waste my time during this 11 weeks of term 2. I had only 3 days of lectures a week. My project was a failure, and chinese new year's celebration was a bit of a disaster. I hate not completing my goals and giving up endeavours halfway. Yet, that was the case.

I tried to make use of my free time this year. Firstly, we had this rule - no dotA in the house. (Yes, we are bunch of geeks who banned multiplayer game in the house). So, for the first term, we had a creative plan. The plan was to make a web application. It went on well at first (as always), we gathered some helpful members and started working and researching. I literally spend all my free time trying to learn web based programming, no drama, no movies. Things went on a few weeks and we even got a web server set up with a simple website and original design. Regretful to say, that was the furthest the project went. After 3 weeks of Christmas break, the 2nd term kicked in, and my members were all so busy with their own final year project in college.

I realised that I had to move on with other things. I was glad though I did learn a lot more about the web now. So, my second plan came in. Since I know nothing besides science, I started to read up all about business and economics. I was trying to read a book a week, in the end, ppstream took over my life... Sadly, 3 books was the best I got to.

About 1 more month to completion of final exam, see I am not counting down to the beginning. I have been procrastinating for first week of easter (supposed to be study break).

The thickness of all the lecture notes for this year. 7 cm, isnt that little?

Lets see what I can remember....

More outings with uni mates. This was hiSushi, unlimited sushi buffet!

Poker night and Stephanie's birthday. We really had a lot of alcohol this year.

One of its effect...


Inevitably, I turned 21.

And had the worst shooter I tasted. Tequila + Vodka + coagulated cream, make me feel like puking straightaway.

Rest of the term I guess I spend most of my time doing courseworks and project.

The little corridor of our department, dont you get it ? BioEngineering, means green....
Actually my department should be electrical engineering this year.

Anyone with good summer plans?

Give and take

When you sit alone in a room for a day, you get all sorts of wild thoughts running in your mind.
I was suppose to force myself to work on the piece of Matlab code my supervisor gave me, I wonder why I get more and more reluctant to work on weekends.

Currently, I would think that anything could be achieved in this world, but there is this one simplest primitive task that I always fail at .... relationship. Not only the guy/girl type, I think I suck at all sorts.. from friends to family.

I would wanna blame how I was introduced to this world in the past 18 years, instantly I could slap myself for having this thought. I believe I am not a caring person, and I didn't know how to. I don't wanna follow the pathetic path that I've witnessed for such a long time. I hate to be alone, but am I better off alone?

Can my reader tell me why is it so hard to cultivate relationship than to score A? Maybe I was born with the lack of some part of my brain. Am I a caring and helpful person? Yes, come and slap me or something! Scold, criticise and say yes, you dumb moron!
I should be contented. Mediocrity is a luxury, love cherishes.  FML.

Ps: You could/should totally ignore this post, it would be good if you could show me a finger, better if you say fuck off.

Snowboarding trip 2010

Today is Chinese New Year and Valentines day. Fortunately for a person who is away from home and single like me, this coincidence saved me from grieving in two days. Though I should wish those of you who are cherished, a happy CNY/Valentines or both of it!

While the productivity through the day is greatly reduced by the mood, weather and occasion, I rather spend it on reminiscing the wonderful times earlier this year. This year's winter was much colder, nevertheless we headed to the colder region of French alps for a frost blasting thrill.

Welcome to Villard de Lans!

We took a plane to Grenoble and rode a local hire van to our hostel, much better than the painful 20hours bus ride last year.

The alphines on the slope are all covered with snow after 2 days of heavy snowfall.

One of the path taken most. It is green, means easy. It is also our daily rendezvous.

This path is call Salamandre. A long flat green path, I hate it the most because its not a slope, and without gravity doing the job, I always end up walking the path.

This is a view from the chair lift.

And the chair lifts looks like this. Sitting on it is not a pleasure because without heat generated from body movement, you would feel how is it like to be exposed to wind as cold as -10C.

The most beautiful summit I found in this ski resort. I like the paths too, long blue(medium) trail, although in the end we always ended up in descending the black (very hard) trails.

 

 

Occasionally if we think snowboarding and skiing is not dangerous enough, we tried standing on an icy slippery see-saw.

The weather changed drastically in the week we were there. When we arrived, too little snow cause most of the paths to be closed. Followed by 2 days of extremely fine and sunny weather, 2 days of extremely cold and foggy weather, and 2 days of heavy snowfall.

A mini snowman or snowbaby....

We started off with moderate weather of snowboarding and skiing

Then there was a day we had a great lunch with a good weather on 2000m above sea level.

It seems so warm and cozy sitting on these benches sunbathing. Well actually part of your body not facing the sun is very cold.

The next day, it became foggy..

Worst, came heavy snowfall...

Fresh snow is so thick, you could bury a person with it.

Most of the time we got stuck in thick pile of snow.

And the cold is unbearable.

See the frost deposited on their hair. So "cool"!

When we were not snowboarding, we spend our time playing card games.

And we cooked our dinner most of the nights.

On the last day, smart as we thought we were, we forgot to bring our shoes to return the snow boots.

But plastic bags worked well on snow too!


As always, I believe that the French are better in appreciating food.

 Something quite relative to the fondue, where you melt the cheese and eat it with your meat platter.

The pie of the day. Seafood baked with potatoes and cheese, delicious.

Another pie, if I were to remember, its something called forest pie. Claimed to be very meaty instead of forestry. Reminder that forest is not a habitat only for vegetation, it is also a habitat for animals.

The table of our last dinner in France.

Dessert: Dame Blanche. Very creamy

A very special alcohol drink which contains mountain herbs.

On the mountain restaurant

French toast.

Apple pie.
The french do have a habit much like us(slacking). They spend a long time for lunch, chatting for the first hour before they start looking at the menu, and more talking after that.

Besides, we have a lot of different crepes, from savoury to sweet.

The popeye crepe.

and their alcohol is really strong!

Burning crepe.

Finally we bought those alcohols home. There were these bottle of sugar soaked in 80% alcohol concentration, a cube gives you instant warming sensation.

The riddle of the trip:

Go in hard hard,
Come out soft soft.
In out in out,
juice come out....

I know that a normal 'adult' mind of yours would thought of only one answer. But you should guess a type of food.

If you would have guess it is ice-cream, we share the same great mind. Apparently your answer is still wrong...

Oh, its time for real work!