I managed to install Vim 7.2 on my zone. I think I have everything I need to go into production. This is so exciting. However, with an hour to my bedtime, less than 23 hours to my first mid-term test paper, I think it is time I said goodbye to mid semester break of semester five. Still trying my best to salvage time by doing as much as I can before today ends. Besides installing Vim 7.2, I also managed to finish reading a book titled "How to do everything with PHP and MySQL" and now I should know everything I need to start doing work. However, the super speed reading made me a little dizzy. I officially think I study too much and am turning into a nerd and a geek.

That was not all, I also managed to finally clean my room (I am walking barefooted in my room right now!) and made a little space. I should be doing laundry soon or else it might push back my sleep time a little. That was two things off my todo list, yay! I am starting to panic now because I am still not ready yet for my first mid-term test. Time is never ever enough. Then I have to wonder how am I going to manage because right after tomorrow's test, I would have to study for yet another test the next day. They were too near each other.

On hindsight, this will be my blog's 400th post. It came a long way. Since I started around 2004, I guess I average 100 post a year. Oh my, it's been 4 years already? I felt like I didn't accomplish much. Then again, I need to accomplish more as I inch closer and closer to my doom. I got my Computer Graphics Lab 2 back and I got full marks again! I guess this is the longest running perfect record I have. For once, I still have hope at the halfway mark. I need to keep this hope alive. I really really need to keep this hope alive. I guess this will probably be the last time I can fail.

I have been helping out a little over at CS1101C forums. I guess my level of competence is still at that level. I need to move on to the next level. I shall help CS1102C next. Then I will help in those modules in which I am studying right now. I realized the level difference between me and those that are really good. I strive to beat them. =) For the first time, Wai Hong is with full with motivation. (Sadly, there's no confidence yet.) I will not settle for anything less than full marks!!! I will try my bestest best.


I am officially into the middle of my fifth semester at NUS. Once again, I will try to avoid making comments about how time have passed so fast. I will also try to avoid making comments on how the mid semester break turned out to be less fruitful than intended. But hey, that's all life. I bet I am not the only person who happen to do things this way.

I also happen to have the privilege of getting sick for an extended period of time. Standard operating procedure means I must go and see a doctor. I think I have yet to recover fully from it. At least, my appetite is still not back yet. Nowadays, food seemed tasteless and eating felt a lot like a chore. Sometimes it even felt torturous to try and finish food just because I didn't want to waste food. At least the worse part of things are over. I was having diarrhoea for the early part of the break and waking up in the middle of the night multiple times to go to the bathroom is only going to make me more sick.

There are a lot of factors that might have caused me to be sick, so much so I cannot identify which one it was. (That tells you something about my living condition) I believed the effect were cumulative, and all the wrong things that I did evolved into me being weak and frail and easy to get sick. I need to get gym membership, and I need to exercise more, I need to eat better, and live better. It is difficult to balance everything I guess. I am still chasing dreams, and trying to accomplish as much as I can now that I can.

I have just gotten my SoC zone access after much trouble. It was supposed to take one hour but in the end it just took slightly more than 50 hours. It was 51 hours (and a half) to be exact. I am so excited that I have 'full' control over it now. Then come another problem. You see, I'm a pampered kid who used Windows since somewhen in 1995. I have only spent like the time between 1993 - 1995 operating a computer without a mouse and running on DOS. I was rather proud of my keyboard shortcut skills back then, and it carried over to the mouse era. I always tried to use keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking for it was much easier.

Then 1999 came and Windows 98 came. Ugh, I never knew many keyboard shortcuts anymore. I begin to even know less keyboard commands. I was dependent on the mouse now. It seemed so convenient that I feel retarded on a computer that didn't have a mouse or some sort of pointing device. My Solaris 10 troubles didn't stop there. I couldn't install latest version of vim on it. After using other IDEs with colourful syntax highlighting resulting in beautiful and readable code, going back to vim is a little hard for me. What I'll do is download the file onto my computer, edit it with my nice IDEs, then upload it back and overwrite to test.

Hey, 3 hours of work, I managed to install Ruby, Rubygems and Rails on my zone already. I guess this is not bad for me who's less than 20 hours into my zone. =) More excitement follows! =)


I feel totally terrible right now. Like, I feel dizzy, feel like vomitting, no appetite, frail and weak, feel cold but sweating like mad, and I can't think. There are like so many things waiting for me to do but I can't do them because I can't think and I hate the feeling. I think it might be the McDonald's meal because there was once I fell ill after eating McDonald's meal and drinking their Milo. Yeah, I drank Milo too.

On the bright side, I finally see different ads on the top bar. =) Anyhow, I really don't feel like talking or doing anything right now. Till I feel better.


It's time for Wai Hong's daily dose of insanity. I was pushing an all-nighter yesterday to finish up everything that I set out to do. Of course, time and time again, I realize my stupidity and still goes on to commit the same mistake. =( However, at this hour yesterday, my mind was pretty dead and therefore, I could only do something that required very little thinking. I stumbled upon Google blog search and I was blog surfing. (Yeah, whenever I update, I feel like reading what others had written.)

Here are some highlights:- (Taken out of context but you know what they mean)

"...I still feel like a child stuck in an ageing body..."

"I am annoyed at my small brain capacity."

And something nostalgic:-

"People always leave."

Who knows who might be reading my blog at this moment? =) Anyway, I have made the decision to drop a module because I really cannot take it anymore. I give up, I suck at it. It's true. You win this time, but I'll be back maybe next semester or the semester after next. I can't simply drop it from CORS, I have to go to the undergraduate office to drop this module. Once I made the decision, the stress level dropped substantially. I know I saved 7 hours a week from not having to go for lessons, but it's worth more than 7 hours a week. I have to spend extended time studying for labs and tutorials because I am not up to standard yet and therefore it consumes too much time.

All of a sudden, I managed to clear many items on my to-do list too. Seems like I am on track to study for the series of mid-term tests that are coming in less that two weeks. Plus, some blessings came down upon me. My Java module tutor have uploaded all the marks for all the labs and assessment so far and I am glad to have scored full marks for all of them. If this module has a letter grade, I would be on my way to earn a good grade! However, there isn't and this module is always by S/U basis and I guess that's why people don't bother to compete. However, it gave me a little confidence boost. =) On a side note, I finally managed to upload all Chicago photos and did laundry. I wanted to do a thorough clean-up of my room too, before the holidays start.

Looking forward to a great day and McDonald's breakfast! =)


Of course I really shouldn't be blogging right now, but I have made blogging a part of my to-do list and I don't really add this in that often now that I am really busy. It just irks me that I have something sitting on my to-do list for so long and here I am trying as fast as lightning trying to get rid of it. Actually, on second thoughts, I really really shouldn't be blogging right now. There are people on my tail hunting for me. =(

Ok, let's make it a real quick one. I am blogging from my heaven once again! Woah, why? You see, I was a lucky bastard. =) I managed to get a room through the wait-list. I really don't deserve a room here judging by the amount of CCA points that I have. There are people who have more CCA points that I had and they didn't manage to secure a place through balloting.

So I went to check-in since that would mean another year of lodging woes taken care of. I suspect foul play, because every other friend that I know that applied for the wait list got in. Did they just plain screwed-up? Seems like they did. There was no sense in having such a high CCA point cut-off if you are going to let everyone that didn't make the mark to come back in again through wait-list.

Before I'm back in, I was so excited by the fact that I once again have a place to rest my mind and the convenience. You see, the grass is always greener on the other side. I got in, and I got reminded why I kept on complaining about this place from time and time again. Ok, to start it all, prices have increased and this year, we're paying $75 a week as compared to $60 a week since 2004. I'm sure everyone can do the math, but I shall spare people the agony of pressing their calculators since people are probably trying to save time by reading lightning fast through my post. That's $1350 for 18 weeks (Sem1) before electricity and registration which totals another $30 before 7% GST. Compared to $1080 a semester before this one? Then I am going to ramble and ramble on and on about how long can $270 can last me which I think you probably don't want to hear. Simply put, $270 a semester is a lot of money!

I guess everyone have a dream car, dream house and such. I dream that I would one day stay in type A room of PGP, which is like chalet since it has attached bathroom and air-cond. I had the privilege to get to one of my friend's room which was like the top level and sea-view. Woah, sounds like really fun! So I try my best to save up money hoping that one day I might be able to stay like one semester before I graduate. However, the price is putting that more and more like an unrealistic dream. It's now $140 a week compared to $110 a week last year. I know the type C room is going to increase in price again next year to $90 a week from the current $75. That means type A room should cost $170 a week next year. Boo hoo, that's really luxurious price, and there are no upgrades within the facilities at all. (I think I had the price list somewhere in some post of my blog but I am too rushed for time to look for it at the moment and I guess I can't be too far off...)

Secondly, unfortunately, I managed to get a room in Block 1. That is bad considering I need extra 10 minutes to get to the bus stop and back. Plus, first impression of the room sucks. It smelled and the windows were really really dirty. Since we're a half cluster and half of the level is public area, we only have a small kitchen and only two shower cubicles and two toilets. I suspect that my table is connected to my neighbour's, because when his phone vibrates on his table, I can feel the vibration too. There are two people in my cluster that smokes. =( People of this area like to blast music loudly too! Then there are those people practising their piano and saxaphone.

You know the feeling when you listened to the same thing too many times. Ooh, and this certain person that blast music, likes the song Lao Shu Ai Da Mi very much. In his/her playlist, it begins with the female version, then the male version then the Thai version etc etc for about seven to eight songs and the the playlist repeats. Horror! My room happened to be facing the kitchen too, and people can really extent their hands and throw things into my room from the kitchen if I left my windows open. Then, it is not convenient to go to the basketball courts.

Then being on a low level, I don't have a very good view. Scratch that, I don't have a view at all. I really have to go out to take a walk to rest my eyes. When I look out the window I see a public walkway, which means everyone on the walkway can see me. Privacy is really bad. At the end of the walkway is another block, which means my view is totally blocked by Block 2!

Then, I should count my blessings. On the flipside, there are things which I like about my room. No one uses the fridge. It is approaching midway of the semester and the fridge is really really empty. The feeling of having an entire fridge to myself is really great! The ceiling in my room is higher too. Higher than my last two rooms by like 30cm. Sometimes I have the feeling that my room is very cramped up in my previous rooms, but I haven't had that feeling yet down here. I suspect my room is also half a tile wider than before. Half a tile meant something like half a feet. So I guess the extra $15 a week has been used to pay for these.

Wait, there's more! Staying on a few days, I realized my room is quite comfortable. I sleep without getting disturbed all the way until I wake up. When it rains, my room doesn't get wet and flooded like my previous two. I don't have to worry about closing my windows when leaving the room anymore! The shower cubicle have really good water pressure, since I am living in a relatively low level. I spend less time showering and come out feeling more clean than before. Shower time is really critical in the morning when you are almost late for your lecture. This has the best water pressure of every shower cubicle I ever used before.

My clustermates don't cook, so it's like everyone have exclusive access to the pantry/kitchen. I don't know what I might be cooking in there. =) Plus, I used to have to walk quite far to get my McDelivery in the middle of the night. (Because when you are hungry and it's past 2 a.m., the only option you have is McDelivery. This time, I can instruct them to stop at my lift. I can even see the McDelivery man from the window. It's like less than 3 metres from ground outside my window. If you have very good climbing skills you can climb a pillar that connects to the bottom of my room into my room. When I moved in, I got my taxi driver to drive me all the way here too. Carrying things up to my room wasn't that much of a hassle. I have a really bright table light! I don't know how, but it makes me feel like doing proper work more!

Ooh, I finally played basketball after not exercising since I left last semester. I concluded that basketball is evil. After an hour or so, my legs were so tired they refused to follow my instructions. After another hour of getting forced to exercise they began to ache. Then I ached so bad the next morning I couldn't get off bed and get on time to my lesson. Most of my basketball playing friends have all left, so I don't feel so attached to the basketball courts anymore. The trick is not to make new friends/attachments.

Today is officially two weeks after I moved in to my room and I still have yet to fully and neatly unpack everything of mine. I sure learnt a lot from travelling for two weeks. It makes you distinguish from things you really need and things you don't really need. Part of the reason was also I am superbly busy as things go into full swing. Plus, I felt like I couldn't catch up with the pace of everything, and hence I need to spend more time. I can't help but to feel behind time. Therefore, I am always looking forward to weekends where I can spend more time catching up. Unfortunately, the past weekends haven't been spent as fruitfully as I wished.

To make myself more time-efficient, I have made a to do list on my desktop, and the list have only been growing. It's possible to finish everything on it on time and still have some time, but unfortunately, sometimes I get distracted, and I am not a genius where I can just look at something and figure out on the spot. I have to search the internet, read the textbook, do the tutorial and do the labs. Then interests also play a part. I am usually spending more time than needed on modules that interests me and on those not so interesting ones, I just spent not enough time. Overall, the to do list is helpful. I forget things that I need to do less often and I get distracted less.

We had our very first presentation for year 3 project and I am very glad it went very well. I was a little nervous as first but being surrounded by capable team members, I managed to relax. However, I am struggling to catch-up in some other modules. Then there are two labs waiting for me to finish this week that I was supposed to finish during the weekend but since I spent the weekend unfruitfully, I am now trying to rush them all. Trying to finish everything before the end of tonight. A little unrealistic, but I hope it works and sticks.

I met up with some of the people I got to know from Work and Travel US and everytime I meet them, I get very excited about uploading and sharing photos. However, meeting them in person felt a little different down here. It must be the weather. I was half expecting the weather to be cold as I met them face to face. Then I started sweating and realize I am in Singapore. I miss the weather of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and also Sandusky when we first reached there.

Oh, and I managed to install the Wordpress blog engine on my test server. It was free and open source code for it and it was really easy to install. Now it has a rather cool theme too. I was having so much fun that I now feel strongly like having my own server and redo-ing this blog's design. It really put the fun back into blogging, just seeing your post appear in the new design. I had to write a Hello World post even though I am very very strapped for time. However, I don't have the space to house it and also don't have the money to invest in the initial hardware. On the test server, I am only allowed a single database and a max size of 10MB. I will quickly outgrow this 10MB unless I use it on something that would not grow that fast. The price for hosting isn't that expensive nowadays which makes me really feeling like doing it. I just have to eat one meal less a month to pay for hosting. Then I can host almost unlimited databases, forums, sites, blogs and even e-mails. I could also host my Facebook Apps on there! =)

Oh, Facebook is moving on to a new design which I haven't been trying out yet because they say they are going to make everyone move on to the new design. The initial move to have a Facebook account was because I was trying out some platform to dedicate part of my time and work so that I can improve. I think I fell in love with the initial design, and I even took time to make sure my profile had the clean, uncluttered feel. The Facebook people claimed that the new design is cleaner, but oh well, since we're all going to move there soon anyway, I'll stay old for nostalgia. I really need to start work on a Facebook App.

I guess I haven't told many people, but I am really excited about this semester. I am learning a lot of interesting things. I am learning OpenGL! To top it up with excitement, OpenGL 3.0 got released like two weeks after I started learning it. Learning something that is very up-to-date just add on to the fun. Even though I am learning OpenGL 2.1, I guess I can quickly learn 3.0 and since OpenGL does not change all the time, I guess the knowledge will be useful in a long time to come. I was rather disappointed they didn't teach DirectX, but I heard DirectX evolve too fast for even our instructors to learn before they could teach us. I am just imagining the possibilities on what I can do with the knowledge. I am currently thinking something along the lines of mapper extension for MUSHclient.

Then I am also lucky enough this semester to be taking Database Systems. In this module, we don't really focus on the nitty-gritty C programming behind a database system. In fact, all we have to do is just use DBMS (Database Management System) and learn some SQL (pronounced sequel). SQL has been on my to learn list for quite a while now and therefore, I am effectively killing two birds with one stones. If you have no idea what a DBMS is, Microsoft Access is one. This module is just like teaching us how to use Microsoft Access! =) Plus, I always wanted to make something advanced with the help of databases. A social networking site? A blog engine? Or simply, a Facebook application. There is a project component to this and I guess it will force me to churn something out! That is some good motivation. Technically after this module, I am able enough to do most of those things listed earlier and also, mapper extension to MUSHclient would undoubtedly need a database system so that linkages between room can be kept.

Have I all been learning only useful stuffs this semester? I am also taking C++ to Java. Being a C/C++ programmer, I always wanted to know how those students from School of Computing think. Plus, many courses are taught in Java (not as many as C, but a large enough number) and sometimes I feel shortchanged when I do not know Java. Java was also in my to learn list for a long time and due to lack of time, a lot of things on my to learn list never actually materialized. I learnt Ruby, Perl and Python syntax before, so I technically can program in those but since I didn't have a good project to practice them, I forgot them as soon as I learnt. Luckily my C is still not rusty yet. Benefits of practice! =)

I almost wanted to kill myself for trying to read a book with 1.5k pages on trying to program for Windows in C. (Actually, I am thankful that book was written but this example does not show why) I read another book about Java and the way to do is described in Chapter 2 in a book for beginner. All you need to do is java.import.swing.* and call the related functions to draw a window onto the screen. Eep, that is really handy. Almost sounds like Ruby. However, Java does have it shortcomings. On one hand it spends programmer's time more efficiently (like Ruby) so programmer just spend time trying to implement function that works instead of spending more time on debugging and so on. On another hand, if you did it that way, you don't really have the fine control over the program you created.

Execution of Java code is slower than C code. (Netbeans takes more than 1 minute to get ready) That's longer than time taken to load Photoshop on my computer. Something just doesn't feel absolutely spiffy. It is inefficient in another way. I would rather spend more time to write the code and then save time when I am using it since I am probably going to use it for a longer time than time spent writing the code. I guess I am probably going over to Ruby once I know Java well enough. For now, I'll speak in Java until I get good enough at it! =) Oh, I could write my mapper in Java! =)

I guess I overstayed my welcome, and oh look, a bunch of words and no pictures = no one's going to read it! Right?


Just an interesting commercial. =)


Wai Hong is currently an undergraduate student at National University of Singapore. He majors in Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering. He is a member of the forever sixteen :) club since he was sixteen. He was lucky enough to end up in Anglo-Chinese School Independent and then Anglo-Chinese Junior College, where he spent his best years and still looking to spend more best years. He was born into the world on 16th October, sixteen years ago. =)

Angel * Carol * Esther * Michael * Mindy * Samantha * Seraphina

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