About Me



Name: Dr@n|xX

Goofy. Manic. Daffy. Warped. Dotty. Loony. Shtick. Zorbed. Need i say more? ;)

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Sunday, November 20, 2005

Dr@n|xX at 9:53 PM

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Well i'm home. In both senses, was in Singapore yesterday and saw a couple of good friends and saw the new City Campus.
I'm literally home in JB now, and i still feel freaking warm in an air-conditioned room...

Plane flight was good - SIA at their best again. Food was good, flight was somewhat turbulent, but way better than my flight to NZ. Movies were good, watched Valiant, Cinderella Man and Minority Report. Air-hostesses and service were good too, this time round most of the laidies were good looking, unlike my flight to NZ which had only 1 extremely bewitching air-hostess but everyone else were otherwise quite plain-looking.
Had a Dutch hospital designer sitting beside me, friendly guy, and extremely well-travelled. Natively Dutch, but has lived in Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand. Best part was the guy was a car-buff as well, and had a pretty good time talking to him about RX-7s, rotary engines and their poor fuel-economies but rather blood-racing turbine screams, BMW's rear-wheel drive traditions and brave new design cues and the lack of speed limits on the autobahn and autostradas over dinner.
The Japanese guy on my left though was in my opinion an even more amazing guy even though i never once talked to him throughout the 9.5hr flight. He left his seat for a grand total of 3 times to go to the toilet and only the toilet. All other times he was bolted down in his seat, reading and finishing 2 books in the process. His eyes never left his book other than to go to the toilet or to face the air-hostess whenever she came by offering hot towels, meals or drinks. He didn't even look at me when i tried my best to utter a nonchalent "excuse me" in Japanese to reach across him to get the magazine pouch which was beside him (since i was sitting at the emergency exit seat so there weren't any seats in front of me and therefore the pouch was not in front of me).

So i've been in Southeast Asia for a grand total of 62hrs. I feel happy i've already had the opportunity to reminisce with old friends Crystal Jade, Adam Road Sambal Stingray & Ice-kacang, Pokka Lemon & Calamansi, Ribena and many more will come.
Oh how i've missed you.

For the people still in NZ, be extremely happy u're not here in the heat and humidity. Enjoy ur time in NZ while it lasts... sob sob... i wish i were there with you....

"If you've been waiting, you've been waiting too long... " - Purenz.com Advert Theme Song

Dr@n|xX at 12:12 AM

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Man its so surreal.
I swear just last week i was just stepping into the iSPACE office for the first time, about to be introduced to a brand new lifestyle. I swear it was just yesterday i just shook hands for the first time with all the wonderful people i've met here. It feels like i just came back from my mid-semester break just last night, and i'm still feeling the itch of a need for more.
I'm so envious of everyone else, travelling South Island (Queenstown OMG i so wanna go there), seeing the mysterious mountains of Milford Sound, experiencing the countryside'ish cityscape of Christchurch and marvelling at the splendour of the Southern Alps. I'm sure you guys are gonna have a BALL =) wish i could be there with you all........

But well, i'm coming home. Back to sunny Singapore, where its either too cold in the lecture theatres or too hot outside - take your pick. Back to the comfort zone, where prices are low, and the security of knowing a safety net called family is nearby.
Family. A very nondescript word. Most people never realize how much they miss their family until they're too far away to enjoy their love, and most people never realize how precious their family is until they lose it. Or nearly lose it. Most people won't understand the significance of what i said until they experience it themselves anyway, like i did.

I got past one big worry. So now i move on to my other checklist of worries, of problems to patch up, of past mistakes to atone for, of new solutions to find, of more instances to help, of hopes to discover.
Sounds like my trip to NZ was really a holiday huh? A getaway from all this...
Perhaps, but whatever it is, i'm coming back.
Home.
My sanctuary.

Dr@n|xX at 8:02 PM

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Your Brain is 80.00% Female, 20.00% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

I've always known this, especially when i took a proper scientifically-recognized and much more research-grounded and logical test quite some years ago and it said i had a brain leaning towards a female one due to the fact that (well at least a couple i remember):
1. i pay attention to details
2. i tend to let emotion make choices
and a long list of other reasons, as well as a couple that pushed my scores back up towards male a little:
1. i'm hopeless at multi-tasking, i prefer to concentrate on the job at hand
2. though i let emotion make choices, i still think logically and factually even if the eventual decision would be otherwise
I'm not too bothered as you can tell by the conclusion of the old test i took, nor this newer one i took, but the next one... this... this... this is wrong man... wrong................

What Your Underwear Says About You

It's important that your underwear doesn't offend anyone - in case you get in a car accident. You are childlike (or childish), and prone to run around in your underwear.

Dr@n|xX at 7:19 PM

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Its odd that i'm absolutely not stressed about my exams here at all, yet i'm losing sleep.
I don't sleep during the night despite trying, wake up feeling tired and not being able to study, and end up taking long naps in the day when i should be working, and the cycle sinks in.
I've been lucky so far to have been still able to somehow dig out some reserve of strength to last me through the exams i've gone through so far.

I've been trying to correct my sleep cycle over the past week with limited success.
And just on the night where i thought i got it right for a change, they decided to hold a party 2 flats away from me last night, in spite of an alcohol and noise ban in effect here in Parnell Student Village now till the end of the exams. The party was alright as the decibel levels were kept reasonably low, but its as usual the after effects of any party that irked me. Why?
A bunch of drunk morons decided to play soccer in the dark at 2am in the morning in the yard just outside my window. Lily, my french housemate thankfully was a social butterfly and knew quite a few of the drunkards, and requested that they take their game elsewhere, which they did at around 3am. I thought my misery ended there.
I won't detail what happened later because i would then have to openly mention names and finger people, but it had something to do with the things that go bump in the night, and i'm not talking the bogeyman either. Nithya was kept awake because of it, and i presume she too had a frustrating night. Closer friends go ahead and ask me over msn, u'll hear lots of it from me coz i'm still incensed over it.

I didn't sleep till 5am because of that. Woke up (if that's the word to use at all considering how miserable i felt) at 7 to get ready to go for the paper.
Paper was alright, not as tough as i thought it would be, but i screwed up a couple of sections coz i was just so tired during the paper i blacked out on certain things, like question words so i'm expecting zero marks for the section where we're supposed to ask questions in relation to the answers provided in the paper. Just couldn't concentrate during the last quarter of the exam either, so much so i handed in my composition 20 words short of the expected 100 word limit - won't be earning points there either. Hopefully my confidence in the other sections can make up for it and i can still scrape a pass.

But i came home tired, sleepy, dis-heartened and just plain grumpy to the best news i've heard in weeks. Can anyone guess?

Dr@n|xX at 6:53 AM

Friday, November 04, 2005

Sigh... no word from Serena of Office of Registrar... does that mean there isn't a place for me for exchange? Or that she hasn't finished doing the paperwork so she can't give me an answer yet? Then when? Monday? Tuesday? Never?
Well no answer's better than a negative one...
Will worry about it after my French exam in 9hrs...

Je suis intelligent!
Je suis créateur!!
J'ai courage!!!
J'ai chance!!!!
Est-ce que je puis réussir?
S'il vous plaît? =/

Dr@n|xX at 7:19 PM

Wow the Quality Management exam i had yesterday was BALLS hard man...
This is probably the 3rd hardest exam i've had in my history of exams, 1st being Finance101 which i'm sure the people who took it with me will understand and probably still shiver from the thought of it, as the Finance101 paper was the insane hard exam that truly seperated the wannabes from the gonna-bes. 2nd hardest was my Management Accounting paper back in my freshie year, omg that was hard too, probably becoz i was poor in the subject matter. This falls in 3rd.
It was so hard that there we were reading the questions during the 10minute reading time before writing was allowed, 1st question, hmmm this is not easy... 2nd question, holy crap i've never seen this be4........ 3rd question, wat the heck?........ i look up and turns out that everyone else was looking up and looking around, giving everyone else a "I just got steam-rollered" look. A guy at the back of the hall actually raised his hands and asked if this was the correct venue for the OPSMGT372 paper, he probably was disappointed that it was the correct place and we all in for a heck of a ride...
As things usually turn out, in open book exams your book normally doesn't help you at all, this was a similar case...

After the exam i had a dim sum lunch with my classmates in Quality Mangement. Most of them were Hongkees, and though i'm told yum cha ?? is the hongkee derivative of dim sum, i found it odd they used it as a name instead of a verb. They immediately recommended i try out yum cha since i was leaving soon - notice my usage? I'd find it normal if they said "Let's go yum cha", but instead they said "Let's go have yum cha." For those not familiar with dialects or the language at all, this literally means "Lets go have drink tea." Hmm....
The yum cha place was your typical posh-looking Crystal Jade Seafood'y chinese restaurant. When i walked in and saw that it was SO full for lunch time it was so surreal, as for a moment i actually forgot i was in Auckland. The restaurant was quite big, yet it was FULL of asians... Most of them spoke Cantonese, and all the staff spoke Cantonese, so not surprising service was typically Hongkee as well, especially the cashier who had all the makings of a very successful punching bag.
The funny thing was that i believe most of them were born in HK, cept the right most girl who's PRC but from the Southern part so she knew Cantonese and got along well with the rest of them, while the left-most guy with the cap was born in Taiwanese and alternated between living in Taiwan and HK for the early part of his life before moving here. Now the funny thing (no all that i've said wasn't the funny thing lol) is that none of them knew how to hold chopsticks the right way. It was funny to see them have to poke siew mais to eat them simply becoz when you cross your chopsticks (the wrong way) you don't get enough room nor strength to fit the siew mai in your chopsticks; it was even funnier to see them have so much trouble negotiating the chee chiong fan becoz it was so slippery and it was hard to hold them with crossed chopsticks and keep the slithery chee chiong fan in the chopstick, even if they succeeded they usually failed in keeping the prawns and char siews as fillings.
Dim sum, err yum cha, was good, the lor mai kais were mmmmm, and though its embarrassing to say this, but OMG the chicken feet was HEAVENLY mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Lunch would've been even better had all those HK movies i watched have a bigger impact on me coz it was odd sitting at the table and not knowing anything they were all talking about becoz they were spewing Cantonese left right centre, i could pick up words but not sentences, and nothing at the speeds they were talking. I occasionally could understand becoz their bouts of laughing after their sentences gave me time to dissect their sentences into the words i knew, piecing them together to form a rough idea on what they were talking, and by the time i understood the punchline and starting giggling they had already moved on to their next topic.
No matter, food was good, price was reasonable, and i enjoyed myself nonetheless :)

Dr@n|xX at 8:09 AM

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Dr@n|xX at 1:11 AM

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Dr@n|xX at 11:07 AM