BACK. A very late thank you!

I think no one missed me, but whatever HAHA. I had so much fun at the retreat, though I have lost so much time. Very sorry to my Facebook Seminar group. (I even sort of lsot my voice, hope I can present tomorrow but it sounds pretty sexy now, ya right.) Though I think I better post an entry now before continuing that or I'll have more to do later :/ Good thing retreat ended early (was debating between sleeping a bit or doing this entry)

A big thank you to all the wonderful people in my Facebook App group - Ji Wei and Cong. Did I miss out anyone? Oh ya, J.Low :D The 2 weeks working together with you guys has been awesome, full of laughter, tears (both actually in delight) and uhh. Uhh, yup.

Ji Wei is probably the most amusing person in our group (I mean, actual humor :D). I think you showed me your Matric. Card knowing I'd have some reaction, right? (It was like the most awesome moment for me :D After Jenathon remarking dully "I am good looking, what.") Though I still feel bad. I keep thinking back about it and feeling guilty and then smiling/laughing. But really, even if you made me feel guilty, you are still a wonderful guy HAHA. I never intended to ask you to pay me back btw, but you may photocopy your Matr..., okay nevermind :P I hope you are not pissed with me :( And btw, I don't think I am intending to be a beancounter. But you are so awesome figuring out so much random things J.Low got you to do. I wouldn't have been able to in this time.

Cong is really awesome. Every time I asked: Is it possible to implement blahblah, he will say: Yes. Although it will take a lot of time/is difficult with a ":-)" face online or irl. Which is an awesome answer that makes a lot of sense, instead of replying "no". Which really emphasized our need to prioritize. But Cong managed to do a lot of things I asked about or got me specifically to help with the layout of specific areas so I didn't feel so useless. I was actually really worried about you when you got that toothache since I thought you had fallen sick from overwork. You shouldn't be up for classes at 8am if you go to bed at 5am! Please take better care of yourself leh :P And you are the least mean person in the group :D Super good natured, I like working with you. You and Jenathon handled the programming aspect very well, very dedicatedly. I salute you. Jia you for your next project (hope you remember what it means :D)

Jenathon is also rather awesome, I guess. You still have to get me sour lemons btw. J/k :D I think you learnt how to fish very well on your own, and actually I think you are really sadistic, since you remarked happily with a huge smile on your face about how our group is better than those with full programmers since you actually learnt a lot that way. Like Cong, you torture yourself a lot, but at least you get a bit more sleep ;P But seriously, sleeping late and waking late is unhealthy (yeah yeah "whatever" me when I say this). I still cannot understand why people can't sleep early, wake up early if you end up waking late anyway. If you sleep late, still wake early, then it makes sense. But maybe it is a programmer thing? But you led us well :D And you were nice if I think about it now, like when you actually bothered to explain that you weren't putting down my suggestions, just thinking (I know even without you saying la, I'm also like that some times anyway).

Hmm, for myself, I think I learnt a lot on this project. In the past, I was always used to working with people from the same background. It was really easy to split everything into parts and do it individually. This time though, it was hard to so ao, because when I tried to do the layout initially, I was kind of like hmm... I don't even know if they can implement this, or how exactly they have already arranged everything already (the page was an error page man, nothing to see of what was done so far). But as J.Lo says, just draw, if cannot implement, just redraw again lor :P (It was a joke, ofc the group talked more about it) So communication was important, especially because we had different skills. I also learnt that deliberate "mistakes" are important. I learnt that in MNO, but it didn't make much sense to me then. Then I tried out putting the scrollbars in and I realized that was true to see if it worked. Which was why there was the "Hugh Jackman rocks" spam btw :P Actually it wasn't very hard Jen :P (You just wanted me to do it right.) Even if there were divs in tables which were in divs :/ Lucky Ji Wei saved us with a new code. And I still think I could have helped more o.o I only read through all the file things seriously once I had more time because the different weird margin sizes were irritating me actually and it wasn't a priority HAHA. And it made me think why I didn't do so earlier. 2am-5am very day was possible... boo so I suck for sleeping at 2am. B/c CSS seems really like the designer's job. There isn't nothing for non-programmers to do once we were done except sit and wait to test... it was kinda up to us to go and find something, but I didn't. I was guilty of SLOTH. I love drawing though :( But there wasn't much chance since the app wasn't a game :( Layouts/commenting aren't half as fun even though I know they are necessary.

Okay, I am only kinda reflecting because of the retreat I jsut came back from. Which was awesome, and completely re-energized me. (I actually got less than 5h of sleep the 2 nights) But we mostly sang, listened, ate every 2.5h (I had 6 fantastic meals a day) and there was free flow of coffee/tea/milo/water. Although every time we had to reflect I feel guilty thinking of my seminar group back home or how I didn't do enough for the app or how mean I am and feeling guilty because I actually smile at the last thought. I sware (deliberately mis-spelled in case I fail, but I'm not intending to), Ji Wei, I won't laugh the next time. I am so so sorry I keep bringing it up but it's like, I can't forget T.T

But I enjoyed the entire experience. Back to sem proj.!

A short break

Yees, I think tonight can sleep at least 5hours already :D (no, I haven't been sleeping super late and waking up really late, I just sleep late but persist in waking up early LOL) SoI'm ganna blog for a while to de-stress. I mean, I lurrve blogging!

Soo, Jonathan saw my post about feeling useless and happily gave me work to do :d I actually coded today. Gotta change the new event layout I did in Excel into a part of the app (still dunno if it is a joke, but it's fun to try). And omg, I have real respect for all the programmers. Understanding and actually doing it is so different. I mean, it's easy to suggest how the stuff should look, but to really do it is blaah.After 1 hour+, all I churned out was a mess HAHA (lucky there was a backup of the original file). Cong's face when he saw it was so priceless.

In case you are wondering, part of my 1h+ worth of work...

Couldn't look more different than what it is supposed to be. (all right, it could la) Steady, perhaps slow and easy I guess (within the deadline ofc).....

And I still think my group is awesome to be in. Ji Wei is damn funny :D I just had to say that.

"What! I only can invite 4 people to the application?!?! But I'm the developer!!!"

And trying to prove the inside of the plastic cup is more slippery than the outside!

HAHA.

Okies, bed time. I really just wanted to see how fast I could type an entry :P Answer is damn fast :D So it's no problem even if I get really busy... not even 5min whaaha

Or not bedtime :P

The day before yesterday's Reflection 2

Well, Monday's lesson was much easier to understand :D (even though I was a bit Z.Z at the start since I had just woken up, and later on really hungry since I hadn't had dinner... wah I couldn't take my eyes off Tomithy's food for quite a long while).

So Monday's lesson was about... mm :D In my current tired state I remember Prof saying that we can refer to other people's blogs, so...

... found one on sleep deprivation HAHA. I think it was in TSS before but this one got graphs that are swimming before my eyes. I cannot agree more that sleep is important, and although this is only the 2nd week, we are all really deprived of sleep. (see my vocabulary sucks now)

Oh ya, so what did I learn. I think that table where you actually prioritize the things you want to do is really helpful, even if it is a real hassle to decide exactly the priority and to even make it. Since when we get into the heat of things we tend to focus on too many things and losing sight of what is most important, so it really helps to keep people on track. Especially when you are dreaming really, really big.

Ugh anyway I'm feeling pretty useless right now blah why am I even blogging instead of working? Oh ya, it's homework :P I really think the programmers have to do way more work. And I can't quite learn all this programming stuff fast enough. Just sort of went though html an CSS but it's not committed to memory. Probably only can do a bad job at best with lots of referring. So most of what I do now is uhh sit and think about the app and what to draw, which isn't real action and intangible (and so many times the idea's end up seeming really stupid and I feel my time is completely WASTED. As a result wasted time>useful time). Not even sure if it's useful... and I just keep thinking the icons now are not very pretty or professional, even though they are meant to be rough. Not really creative either and I'm feeling really vexed over something so small. And I never thought the less pictures there is, the harder it'll be to think what to do. It's blaaaaaaaaaah. How do other people in the world actually conceive things so quickly!

GAH. Okay, back to uhh thinking unless the sandman gets me firsrt

CHICKEN!

I love chicken! Really, I do! :D :D

It was awesome of Prof Ben to get us KFC for dinner today! I ate 2 drumsticks and a pack of popcorn chicken. Would've taken more but I was afraid there wouldn't be enough for everyone, haha.

Soo imagine my reaction when I got home and saw what was on the dinner table? Yeap, it was FRIED CHICKEN. Not from KFC - it's better :P Soo, I ate 2 more drumsticks and some randome pieces I feel really blissful now.

It really cheered me up :D Because I was feelin' horrible today since I was so lost during the workshop hahaha. Made worse by the fact I was late... sian waited for the BTC as the sun's rays beat down on me for 50+minutes. I keep forgetting that the BTC is infrequent and waaay ahead of schedule during weekends since there is no jam. And the sun tends to zap away all my energy if I am already really awake (but it gives me energy when I am feeling sluggish). Kept having to Google what half the terms meant and im all my friends for help. I could barely keep up... feel damn useless hahaha. Lucky my cousin offered to teach me some stuff at my own pace tomorrow :D I really love my family!

To add to my n00bness, I always thought people use "java" as a short for "javascript" :P I still don't know their difference (Angad and Yecheng got into a really cheem conversation where I was ??? throughout and settled for smiling stupidly and nodding my head randomly) but at least now I know it's different. One step at a time man. I also still don't really know what Linux is, although the one Prof Ben refers to as handsome (but ofc we all think Prof Ben is "handsomest" :)) kindly clarified my question on why I can't ctrl+c and then ctrl+v instead of typing cp -r and what not LOL. When I asked Chris he said something about GUI (which I again had to Google HAHA) which is still too cheem for me. Sigh, everyone is just damn smart so everything is obvious to them :( SEE, that's why I feel so emo :P Anyway, I think the Linux Penguin thing is so cute!

Blah, and I feel even more emo when I think about my life man. Chris was talking about how he loves learning languages and thus programming... and I was like, "What do I love?" I am still struggling to find that :/ Sad story, but I'm only in Accounts because I didn't know what it was about :P So I thought, "Can't be as bad as Med (went for attachment and saw lots of blood and a psych patient and collected spinal fluid from someone with possibly HIV and lots of other scary things I had to touch) or Law (my lawyer friend told me that honestly, I wouldn't have a choice who I help, even if they are really bad people), okie, apply." Yep.

Anyway, I realized that although Prof Ben smiles a lot, it's partly because he secretly derives great joy from making fun of his students! See la, now everyone will think I am some kind of slacker :( I WAS NOT BLOGGING LEH! But it's okay :) One day... mwahaha.

Hmm, and I just realized my home laptop doesn't have a tilde :X So strange!

First Meeting

With my FB app group xD OMG, so many firsts HAHA, this is awesome. The people I am working with are also awesome, gorgeous, humorous people :D This team is a total hit! I know we will get through this happily vexed.

Aand we have an idea for our app already :D:D Though still not really confirmed since we still need to go through more stuff. Weeeeee. I am so excited HAHA.

THE BEGINNING

ADVERT!

Waah everyone is selling themselves on their blogs man. Sorry, mind if I type in a bit of Singlish-ish? xD I've been holding back for the last 2 posts but it really causes me to spend more time typing since I have to edit. Ya, I'm Canadian :P And I embrace Singlish.

Jaja, soo as I was saying (sorry I am typing without much thinking now, my T.V. show is ganna start soon) I didn't wanna "promote" myself since I suck at it, but I always said I wanted to work on that, so why give myself excuses and hold myself back, right? So, I kicked myself to draw something to uhh promote myself so maybe one of you nice people would ask me to join your team since I still haven't finished reading all the blogs :/

TA-DA LOL, it says it all

I didn't have time to color and I know it's very rough/unproportionate? disproportionate ??????, but can pass la for a 5min sketch. Okay, bye-bye, T.V. time!

And umm I am looking for a team with people with nice personalities and lots of immense enormous (I need a thesaurus) passion for whatever assignments we are ganna get :P The teams attitude's is at the moment the most important thing for me :D

---

Anyway, interesting article I read a few months back, some of ya probably read it before:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall

I specially googled it out, OK!

First Lesson

Hahaha, this is rather late a post, but I've been really busy the past 2 days :/

The first class was really fun, although I didn't get some acronyms so I was kinda "???!?" at times :P But I figured I'll know them all in time, especially after one semester.

During class we were asked an interesting question:

"What is the meaning of life?"

A question I have heard often, but never really given much thought to! I don't really wanna get all philosophical, but it was kinda funny because if we aren't living our lives as described in the "meaning" we have come up with, does it mean we have no life (that really IS the same as our life being meaningless). I am just trying to say that the meaning of life cannot quite be stated so simply. I am alive, you are alive, none of us feel empty, emo and have the urgent need to die, right? :/ Then it must be because our life has some meaning even if we are not aware of what exactly it is.

Anyway, kinda sad that I missed some of those undoubtedly awesome show-and-tells! It would definitely have given me a chance to know everyone better. Right now, I'm not even sure who I'm gonna form a group(s?) with. Though I think it is really hard to pick, and well, we won't know how good someone is until we work with them. Everything else is sales talk/fluff, although I do not doubt everyone in this class is awesome (which is why we have been picked). I mean unless we are all in an interview room then it'd all be really obvious, haha.

Although maybe the idea is to find people who are on the same "wavelength" - very difficult to tell from online as well! I guess I just want a team - for now - of the right mix, i.e. not all designers, programmers, etc.

Bleh, anyway, anyone can lend me PS or Illustrator? My dad took mine overseas so I couldn't re-install on my crashed comp :/

CS3216

I actually really, really, really dislike questions like "What do you hope to learn from blebla...". Yeah, I don't really go into things with specific expectations (oh dear), especially in classes where you don't really know what exactly to expect, i.e. not where everyone comes out with the same set of skills at the end of the day. I mean, that's why we are asked "what do you hope to learn" and not "want to learn", right :P

Gosh, I certainly hope this class will be an unpredictable journey. I hope I can take away from this class something I can't take away from others, though I don't know what that will be. I want to be able to say "definitely, yep" if I was ever asked the clich(funny e) question: Will you do it again if you went back in time? Do I think I will get that from this class? Yeah, that's why I signed up for it. I had this gut feeling which I simply acted on, because I was really, really excited when I read about this module. I'm excited about tomorrow (even show and tell :/ I jest). Never been before in my entire uni life (1 semester is reaaallly long). I didn't come in with a ton of careful thinking "I hope to get this, that, this, that from this module". Actually I think I felt kinda high and I wasn't thinking properly. When we were told thatthe class may affect our other mods, I asked myself in my head: How ah, do I care that my other classes would be affected? I was like: Oh well, don't really want to end up somewhere that only looks at my grades. Try my best not to overlook them, but aiyah, whatever. Cross the bridge when I come to it. Yay! (like a complete idiot) I answered a couple of other questions like that too. I knew I would regret not signing up for this class. Uhh, but looking back, I do still wanna do well in my other classes, so good thing my workload isn't so heavy this sem. Dropped the heavier biz mods I was pre-allocated haha.

Mm, so I think I sort of went off the topic. Bear with me, that happens because I don't exactly plan my blog entries like I do with essays (and I don't plan to :P). I guess this question was posed so that we would have a clearer idea of what we hope to achieve throughout this period (some goal setting), or so those teaching us will have a good idea what we think or whatever.

Aiyah, I hope this is challenging and scary. I hope we are able to find something awesome to do with Google Wave too! I don't know why so many people just go blabla seems pretty useless, what does it do now? Instead of getting excited about the future possibilities, what-will-I-do-with-its (meant positively). (edit: I just read the entry we were directed to read where the blogger said something about the use for Google Wave, and this bit I wrote is in no way related to that :X though I must say I think it's pretty awesome people actually don't know what it's good for) I wasn't intending to disagree with anyone so publicly before I even know them haha. I hope to be able to thoroughly enjoy this (though I don't know why I hope... I know I will :P). I know this will be an awesome opportunity to just do something. A ton of people have asked me why I bother to take this since I am in accountancy, haha. I am sure other accts students have also taken it before though for the same reason as I have :D I feel so relieved after watching the Steve Jobs video man :P Assured me that this was the right choice (not that I needed assurance HAHA, confirmation bias). And uhh, my greatest fear is kinda that I won't be able to contribute enough to the teams I am in or the class because everyone is so much more awesome than I am, I'm gonna suck relatively :/ Though I will put in my best and help to the best of my ability. So I hope I won't turn into someone who doesn't really contribute. Blaaah I'm actually pretty confident of myself, just that this is uh uncharted territory.

And all the other usualy stuff like team work, better understanding of..., meeting awesome people, etc.etc.

---
Wah, everyone uses quotes a lot :/ So here's mine inserted rather awkwardly at the end.

"The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money" David Richerby.
YES!!

Next time, I'll think of a more relevant one :P But this one has been stuck in my head since I read it a while back, so... haha :D It's so true, right!