Remember a while back I mentioned about the Trinity 3rd year tea towels? Well, they’ve arrived last weekend. And the towels look like this:
And so, let us scrutinize it in more detail and observe the artistic talents of Cambridge's Trinity students. This is me:
Anime influence:
A bit of an overkill for a tea towel:
The resident alien:
What the heck??!
Yaz.
So I was doing some internet research on the reactor operating procedures for the hydrotreating plant that we’re working on for our group design project (basically a plant to reduce the amount of sulphur in diesel). Then I came across this:
I was wondering, with a name like that, can the company ever be taken seriously?
Yaz.
I guess sometimes, people (UK students) forget that Cambridge or other universities for that matter is an international place. In my case, going to a school with people from 70 different countries tend to make you aware of what you’re saying and how it can be perceived by others. However, for a number of UK students, I suppose university is probably the first contact that they have with lots of international students in one place, and sometimes they forget that the people they’re talking to have different nationalities, cultures and views on things.
I usually have breakfast with a group of people, dubbed ‘The Breakfast Club’ by us. This morning, I saw a friend of mine, an exchange student from France in the hall so I beckoned him to sit next to me. We conversed with the people in my table when one of them stated, “I think Paris is an unattractive place.”
My eyes almost bulged out. Oops, the person who spoke didn’t realise my friend is French! I can’t say anything without being obvious, so I fervently hoped that the person would shut up or talk about something else.
“Yeah, I agree, it’s not that nice. But southern France is beautiful,” quipped my friend.
Phew! He didn’t take offence. That was fortunate. Bloodshed avoided. Though in the future, some people might want to screen what they’re saying to avoid potentially awkward moments.
Yaz.
So, the thing about Cambridge nowadays is that it gets extremely hot. The sun shines brightly and it hasn’t rained for a few days now. Furthermore, these days I also tend to be woken up by the warmth and brightness of day rather than my alarm clock.
Before the exams, I made plans to spend my post exam days with lots of punting practices, cooking and catching up with my readings. Unfortunately, with me being the project coordinator and all, it seems I only have enough time to do these things sporadically. Let’s hope things get less intense from now on since the weather is so nice and if there is a time when I should get a life, it’s now.
Talking about punts, as you may know, Trinity has its own set of punts for us the college members to use. Not for free, of course but it’s still cheap as hell. What you may not realise is that these punts’ names are all related to the number three. For example, ‘Ménage’ refers to ménage a trois and Wise Man is the three wise men in biblical stories. See if you can figure out all of them. Give the answers in the comments if you want to.
The punt names:
And so, what’s happening is that we are all being yanked out of our post exam stupor and idleness back into Chem Eng world. And this happens via the means of a design project, the first ever done in a group (if you don’t count the Weblab computer exercises) and it will last for a whole of a month until the 6th of June when we have to present to a panel of jury and answer questions from them. Hmmm, sounds familiar, when have I done this before?
Anyway, we’re all divided up into groups of six or five, supposedly at random but with staff moderation, which means that it’s not really. Our job is to design a hydrodesulphurisation plant, with each of us in charge of an area of the plant. We also each have one extra task to do. Mine is the project coordinator, which means I put everybody’s little mess together into one gigantic tangling mess. Sounds fun? A friend of mine in the year above specifically warned me about the project coordinator being the most stressful of all the tasks but I guess I’m just too stubborn to listen.
In any case, the first coordinator’s meeting was held today. I missed the first half of it. Not a good start, eh, for somebody who’s supposed to organise everybody else.
Yaz.
P.S. Not quite my fault. The schedule says 12:00 but they moved it to 11:40 and just told us orally. Oh well.
Yesterday was the start of the volleyball summer cuppers in Cambridge. As per usual, it’s held in a grassy area called Jesus Green. The weather was sunny, hot and perfect for volleyball. This year, because of the turnout, the Trinity captain decided to send two teams instead of one. This also means I have more playing time than usual, which is good.
Trinity 1 won both their matches in the first division. Kudos to them. Trinity 2 (my team) went up against the Cambridge Air Squadron and Girton 3 (honestly, how can a college smaller than us have so many players that they send in three teams?) and we also won both matches. Yay!
The next matches will be on the following three Saturdays. Looking forward to those.
Somebody stole the new shiny pot that I bought at TESCO from the Junior Parlour kitchen. Bastards!
While looking for it, I found my old one in the upstairs kitchen, the kitchen used by a few mathmos. Aha, I’m keeping an eye on you now, suspects!
Yaz
I am feeling quite sad. Some time ago a blog that I often read is deleted by its owner. Apparently it was mentioned by somebody in another much popular blog and within hours, lots of visitors from this popular blog visited his site. Unfortunately, despite several nice comments, he was bombarded with lots of other nasty anonymous comments and e-mails full of vitriol that he decided to shut it down. I won’t go into details about the blog. There’s not much point now anyway. It’s suffice to say that I’ve lost a valuable source of wisdom just because there are some nasty people out there who prefer to spew unfounded hatred behind the anonymity of the internet.
Yaz.
And so, this concludes my four-day exam period. A quick summary is given below.
Day 1: Hmmm, not my best attempt at an exam paper.
Day 2: That was horrible! Someone please kill me now...
Day 3: That was alright. Stats question was a bit harsh, though. If you don’t remember one definition then you’re screwed. Good thing I revised.
Day 4: It was okay. Not too bad.
So as you can see, day 2 was the worst for me and everybody else. I will probably not get more than 50% on that paper. But then again, exam’s over now and we don’t talk about exams when they’re over, do we?
We had a little post exam celebration where we went punting on the Cam. Went up to Magdalene Bridge and then down to Kings. For some reason, whenever I go punting I never got as far as Queens. Hmmm, I should remedy this in the future. Good thing I’m in a college that has its own punts.
In other news, last December/January I ordered some volleyball kits since I’m part of the Cambridge UCCMixed team and hence am eligible to wear a track top that has “Cambridge University Volleyball” gracing it. Of course, whether I deserve it or not is another matter. So anyway, after eons of waiting the stuff finally arrived last week. And thus, here are my two kits posing for the camera:
As some of you may know, I’m not really any good at volleyball, so I will feel very self conscious wearing these in Cambridge. Wearing them in Malaysia is of course, a different thing altogether.
Yaz.
And so, to break the mounting tension of exams, here’s a little comic relief. This was sighted in front of Trinity Great Gate today.
So it’s hereby announced that my exam is next Monday! The whole shebang ends on Thursday so until that time, expect me to be busy like a bee. Out of 11 subjects, I still have three more to revise. Not too bad, except for the fact that I got so annoyed at my separations course today (because revising it is such a pain, what’s with all the charts manipulation and everything) that I just aborted it and studied something else. But I’m calmer now, so we’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and because you’ll probably be bored hearing about exams by now, here’s a good news about something else. A while ago I applied to do research at the BP Institute (BPI) in Cambridge for the summer, which is ideal for me because it’s in Cambridge so I don’t have to worry about finding accommodation or food, and because I really want to see how working on a research is like. Well, yesterday they got back to me and gave me an offer! Yay! So that’s what I’m gonna do for 12 weeks this summer. The pay’s (obviously) less than if you work in industry, but it’s good enough so I’m not complaining. Furthermore, the research projects will be centred around energy/oil and gas/ carbon sequestration/ all that jazz, so I’ll probably help combat global warming too.
Wish me luck for the exam.
Yaz.
So now, it’s two more weeks before my finals (and yes, I’m still alive). I think I’m making good progress. There are about eleven subjects altogether, and I’ve finished revising three.
Okay, that doesn’t sound good, but they’re not of the same weight, so I’m doing fine really. I’m focusing on the important ones first. This morning I felt satisfied for being able to do a few past papers that I took a break and just sat next to the river, enjoying the calmness, the fresh air and the ripples on the water surface interspersed with punts going by. I did a light revision there but then it got cold so I had to return to the department.
Wish me luck for the exam!
Yaz.
Well, in another three weeks, I will be having my end of year exam. Hence, I will be spending my April revising for it. So if the blog posting is sparse or you don’t hear from me in the meantime, you’ll know why.
Wish me luck!
Yaz.
Okay, so now I’m safely back in Cambridge after spending about six days in Benelux (that stands for Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg). It was a good trip, the only drawback being the weather. We were hoping for a spring trip, but the weather in Luxembourg reminds me of the UK, just with the rain replaced with snow. It rained in Brussels and Amsterdam, so it’s a good thing that I always carry my umbrella in my backpack. Guess being in the UK for some time (about five years, to be more precise) will do that to you. Fortunately for us, the last day (which we spent by looking at tulips) was quite sunny. I might have cried otherwise.
Also, there won’t be any pictures until the person responsible for compiling and distributing them to us is finished with his task. So you guys have to wait a while for them.
I arrived back in Cambridge on Sunday. And the thing that I can say is that it feels... invigorating, to be back here. The familiarity of the town, the comfort of my own room, the presence of people I know. It sure is nice to be back.
Busking is a regular occurrence in Cambridge. Especially on weekends, you can often see people playing music all around town. I was on my way to the Lion Yard’s O2 shop (to replace my phone, which you know was lost) when I saw a group of people performing in front of the Great St. Mary’s church. They were called the Thudbox, and they were playing with drums and percussions. Unable to resist savouring the moment, I just stood there, enjoying the drumbeat, the music and the warmth of the afternoon. It felt good. It was about twenty minutes before I continued on my way.
Oh, and by the way, the Trinity punting station is open. So if you fancy a punting trip, then drop by.
Yaz.
And how can I not? For starters, it wasn’t a very good weather in the morning. Might have rained for a few minutes, but still okay enough for me to walk across the Great Court for breakfast. Afterwards, it hailed. And then it kind of snowed. Not enough to accumulate, unfortunately. This kind of weather continued throughout the afternoon.
View from my bedroom window:
I was planning to do some revision, but I guess it’s just the kind of weather that makes you feel cosy indoors. I was tempted to just snuggle up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. In any case, it seems there’s no studying for me today. Oh well, I can relax, exam’s still a month away.
(Yeah, that’s what they all say. And then suddenly the Tripos is tomorrow and we’ll all be panicking).
The kind of weather that makes me feel the cosiest (which unfortunately you can’t get in the UK) is when there’s a really heavy rain and the temperature drops and it just spatters on the window pane and you just sit there and you can smell the rain. When I was in AC, my bed was just next to the window. So what I sometimes do is that I sit on the windowsill and just calmly enjoy the moment. Oh, and I always draw the curtain so that if somebody walks into the room, he or she will not realise I am there. Unless you can see the silhouette.
I wish I’m able to do that a lot more now. Just blank my thoughts, forget everything and savour the moment.
Yaz.
It is actually pretty painful when everybody else around you is packing and going back home for the Easter break or planning a trip to somewhere and you’re stuck with a coursework that you have to do. Unfortunately for me, since I was absence during the last week of term, I got an extension for the last exercise deadline, and that means staying in Cambridge until yesterday. Although to be frank, my friends remind me that one exercise only counts for about 1.4% of the final exam marks, so I can not finish them and it will not affect my grades much. But honestly, who’s really gonna do that? I don’t think I’ll be able to live with myself if I take the easy way out (god, that sounds so cliche!), so the past few days have been full of staring at the computer screen and working with Word and Visio and basically just making my exercise report look pretty before the Wednesday deadline.
And hence, starting from today I’m essentially free! No more lectures and supervision work or exercises to worry about. And here are my plans for Easter break:
- Study. With exams at the start of next term I’ll be crazy not to.
- I’ll be travelling to Luxembourg, Brussels and one other city I can’t remember for next week.
- Learning some software such as Photoshop, Hysys and AutoCad in more details. This might involve watching a lot of Youtube vids. After all, you’ll be amazed what they can teach you (I learnt how to tie a bow tie from there)
- Punting!!! I need to work on not going in zigzags anymore. The Trinity punting station is supposed to open after Easter, although I have no idea when that is. So, if you know me and fancy a punting trip then drop by!
Yaz.
Hey guys! I’m now back in Cambridge after four eventful days in Paris. They’re worth it, though, so I’m not complaining. If you don’t have a clue on why I was there, well... the short story is that Cambridge won the UK level of the L’Oreal Ingenius competition, an engineering competition with energy efficiency as its theme; and hence the Cambridge team (three chemical engineers including myself) represented the UK in the International Finals which was held last Wednesday until Friday.
We arrived in Paris on Tuesday and stayed in the Holiday Inn Hotel, where I found that the price per night is around €130, equivalent to £100 and almost about the price of a May Ball. Not that I’m paying for it, but I’m still astounded on how much is spent on bringing us here, not to mention all the food they’ve been feeding us. I remember stuffing myself with sushi for lunch, and tasting the best apple juice in my life sometime on Thursday night, and eating a lot of other tasty food as well.
Anyway, back to something more relevant, they were 11 teams in total: us, Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, France, Spain, Poland, China and India. Germany was supposed to be there as well but for some reason they dropped out. On Wednesday, which for me is the most enjoyable day in the whole program, all of us were split up and put into groups. We then went on a team-building rally/some kind of treasure hunt around Paris where we went around locating places with GPS, singing to a person with a cowboy hat in French, playing petanque, looking for lions, having a rendezvous with a skeleton, among other things. For me, the reason why it was so fun was that we have all sorts of people in the group and we all get to mingle and know each other and do stuff together, something that for some reason was missing in the UK level. I found that my thought was also shared by other members of the group, and one of them (from Poland) remarked that it’s so amazing how now you can meet all sorts of people of different nationalities compared to a few decades ago where this is highly unlikely.
The main event was on Thursday, when we presented our solutions to a panel of judges. To cut to the chase, I’ll just say that we lost. However, in our defence I should probably mention that this is the first year that the UK has entered and things might have been different otherwise. Regardless, all the teams have performed very well and shown a high standard (it is an international competition after all) and hence, any one of them could have won. The winner of the day was the Canadian team and they grabbed a €10,000 worth of a trip to a city of choice.
Well, that’s the long and short of it. I had a really enjoyable time there and despite not winning, it really is worth all the effort that we put into it. To tell the truth, it’s not really the competition itself but the people we met that makes the whole thing so memorable. Like one of my team member said on the train journey back, she missed them already.
Yaz.
P.S. Just one thing that marred the experience: I lost my phone. And this is the first time ever that I lost my phone too. Oh well.
And on those occasions that I got bored or can’t comprehend the snippets of wisdom that they impart during lectures, I tend to do these things:
- Daydream
- Watch other people, see if they are concentrating or not
- Write backwards (mirror writing) with my right hand
- Write normally but with my left hand
- Write song lyrics, either with my right or left hand
Today about ten minutes after the start of our 9 o’clock lecture, a friend of mine walked into the lecture theatre. He probably doesn’t notice it, but he stomps his feet, thus announcing to everybody the arrival of his royal highness. And since I was in a daydreaming mode, I thought of a dinosaur, or maybe Godzilla; and I drew these on a piece of paper:
When he walks in:
When he sits:
The SHE on the picture refers to ‘Safety, Health and Environment’, the course we’re having at that moment. Oh, and if you noticed, there’s an arrow pointing to Mr Dino, but it’s blank. I erased the name to protect privacy, heh heh.
He inadvertently saw the drawing later on in the day so I had to come clean. Oops!
Yaz.
P.S. I’m going to Paris tomorrow. Yay!
At this moment, it’s dark in Cambridge. Friday night, so people are abound. Two policemen are prowling Trinity Street, catching unaware cyclist offenders who ride the wrong way up the street. The lights are mostly off in the Chemical Engineering department, with the exception of the computer room. There, three sad people are working on some kind of project/work/assignment, and one person is typing this blog.
Hello! If you felt that you haven’t heard from me for a while, that’s because I've been a bit busy. Just came back from Wales on Wednesday, where I’ve been giving a presentation. Got an exercise to hand in next week, except one of my L’Oreal team members asked for an extension until Monday the 17th, and we got it. We are going to ask for more, though, since it seems like we may need it. And oh, because of the Wednesday presentation, I missed the UCCMixed volleyball dinner. And I was really looking forward to that one too! On the other hand, I’ve decided to leave Paris early so that I can make it to the Commemoration Dinner.
Wait a minute, didn’t I tell you? Yup, I'll be going to Paris for the L’Oreal Ingenius competition on Tuesday next week until Friday. All expense paid, isn’t that nice? And I hope I can win, so wish me luck!
Yaz.
So what really happened was that on Tuesday night I went to bed at about twelve or so and at around one I woke up because I felt some shaking. Being in the subconscious state between sleep and awake, I wasn’t really able to discern what was going on. I thought it was the people in the room above me jumping up and down and I remembered thinking, ‘Why can’t these people sleep like everybody else?’
It’s only later in the day that I found out that the tremors were really earthquakes. Apparently it was around 5 in the Richter scale and the strongest that the UK has felt in about 25 years or so. My first earthquake! Don’t know whether I should feel happy or scared.
In other news, a friend of mind brought one of those brown, about A4 sized envelopes with him to the department. In the tea room, he opened the envelope and brought out... lo and behold, a Macbook Air! I don’t know how to use a Mac and I’m not fond of laptops with small screens, but even then, I can’t keep my jaw from dropping! It was so thin! Other people in the tea room saw it and they were fascinated as well. It really is an amazing design.
Yaz.
And so it is the case that in the University of Cambridge, there are two student newspapers, The Cambridge Student and Varsity. The former comes out every Thursday, while the latter on Fridays. Normal national newspapers are supplied in the common rooms every weekday, but I often don’t have time to read those.However, I made it a habit to read the two student newspapers since a) they come out weekly and it doesn’t take much of my time and effort to read them, plus they’re kinda fun to read; and b) more often than not I find them very informative of all the happenings in Cambridge that I might not realise or know about.
But anyway, I guess sometimes even the most eagle-eyed editors will miss some things that shouldn’t appear in a paper. The last issue of TCS features a picture of the Christ College’s rugby team posing for the camera and one of the guys is, errr... exposing himself more than he should. It’s not obvious at first glance. I wasn’t aware of it until a friend who visited my room today pointed it out to me. We had a great laugh out of it. Add the fact that one of the other team members is clearly staring at it. My friend pointed out that he’ll be forever known as the guy who stares at the other guy’s exposed anatomy in a newspaper.
The hilarity of it just made my day.
Yaz.
P.S. No, I'm not gonna post the picture, so don't ask =)
Okay, so sometimes in Trinity (or any other Cambridge colleges for that matter) they have these dinners for special occasions and more often than not, not everybody can go to them. Sometimes you’re randomly invited, sometimes you have to be invited by a fellow and sometimes you have to be a scholar. So I was complaining and whining to my friend the other day on how I wasn’t invited to the Rice Exchange dinner for two years now and how some of those who were invited by the fellows got to do things that are not usually allowed e.g. walking on the grass or going on the roof with the said fellow’s permission. Then, just the other day I got an invite to the Commemoration Dinner and this invitation is only extended for scholars but unfortunately enough, I can’t go because I’ll not be in the UK at that time. Great. So I don’t get invited to the ones I can go but was asked to go to the ones I can’t go.
There’s this particular Trinity third year who got the bright idea of producing tea towels with everybody’s faces on them, like those tea towel projects that were done in primary school. Well, maybe their primary schools, I certainly can’t remember having done such a thing. So anyway, the third years all got this small piece of paper each and everybody’s doing a drawing of themselves on them and submitting them to the person in charge. I can’t remember myself ever being artistic, so forgive my humble soul if the drawing doesn’t even closely resemble the subject matter:
Can you recognise me when you see the picture?
It's a small drawing so I'm sorry for the blurriness.
When I was handing mine in, I got the chance to look at all the other submissions. Some of them were bloody hilarious.
I am so buying the tea towels.
Yaz
Well, it’s Frank Morton today (yesterday, actually, since I’m writing this early in the morning). For those of you who don’t know, Frank Morton is sort of a sports day for chemical engineers in UK universities. I wrote about it too last year. This year they’re having it in Leeds and the same as last time, I didn’t go. Why? Because one, they don’t have volleyball and I suck at other sports. Two, last year I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered waking up early in the morning to take the bus to Manchester. So if I go this year to Leeds which is even further up north, that’ll be an inconsistency, will it not? Hehe.
Anyway, because of Frank Morton we don’t have lectures or anything else in the department today so I took the opportunity to finish all my work. Overall it’s quite a productive day. I essentially finished the two exercises that are due on Thursday. Oh, and when I say exercises, I don’t mean jogging or aerobic. I also don’t mean something like a few easy practice questions either. Exercises, in Cambridge chemical engineering speak means coursework or assignments; they typically take two to three weeks to finish. There was a relatively new supervisor who told me that she was surprised when her supervisees (is that even a word) complaint that they cannot have supervision at this particular week because they were all busy finishing some ‘exercises’. She now knows that the exercises are more serious and stressful than the name might suggest.
It’s nearing two in the morning now. I guess it’s been a while since I last worked past midnight. Usually I’ll stop doing anything that requires heavy thinking straight after dinner.
Yaz.
Ever since the incident where I have to wipe out and restore my hard drive, I have this feeling of impending doom in which my laptop will just fail and refuse to start up again. It is nearing three years since I first bought it, so I think the end of its lifetime is looming in the horizon, just that I can’t see it. It might be another one (or two) years if I’m lucky, might be another few months.
Lately there’s this weird noise coming out of the hard drive sometimes. It made me worry. Despite that, the laptop’s actually working well. I guess the wisest step for now is just to backup everything of importance and hope for the best, that it will not fail anytime soon.
Yaz.
The May Ball tickets are now on sale so people have started asking Trinity students whether they have any spares. Unfortunately, since I’ve been to the May Ball last year and will probably go next year, I don’t think I’m attending it this time around. So, for people asking me for tickets, tough luck.
Four more weeks to go... maybe I should start a countdown.
Yaz.
Yesterday there was a career fair called The Works in the New Museum site where my department is and it’s all about alternative paths like voluntary works and environment and the like. There I met two other Cambridge students from my previous school (Atlantic College), one of which I haven’t seen in quite a while, the other I haven’t seen at all since I left the school. That reminds me of the fact that unlike in my first year, this year we haven’t had any UWC meetings or gatherings where we can get together and see each other’s faces, which is a pity really. I guess I might meet up with one or two other people later at some point and organise some reunion kind of thing. That would be nice.
I was having some difficulties with my stats course because the notes weren’t very clear, so I thought I might be able to get extra help by visiting the stats website. My lecturer is the head of this Computational Modelling group in Cambridge and he puts all his supplementary materials on the CoMo website, so I looked there. In the middle of this, I found out that they put an Easter egg on the site. There were several images on the site that contain pictures of cakes, and when you click on the cakes you’ll find a link to their recipes. There were eleven cakes in total. As it turned out, instead of looking at the supplementary materials, I spent my time hunting for these cake recipes within the site and didn’t manage to do any work at all.
Well, at least I got all the cakes.
Yaz.
Turned out that yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day. That explained it, even though such a concept sounds strange to me. Oh well, guess you learn something new everyday.
Yaz.
People from Mars came to the department today (the chocolate company, not the planet). Well, actually it was just one person and he was a recent graduate of Cambridge and a friend of mine. Anyway, the point is, today during break we enjoyed ourselves with free chocolate bars and all that he brought with him. There’s also a free draw with more chocolates as prizes, the largest being a tin of Celebrations chocolate. Guess who won?
He he he.
Yaz.
Day Watch and Twilight Watch is the second and third book from a tetralogy, the first and fourth book being Night Watch and Last Watch respectively. I recently watched Night Watch (a film adaptation) and enjoyed it, even though there are some significant deviations from the book. Wanted to watch Day Watch but restrained myself, since I haven’t read the book yet. I think that since the plot can be quite complex, reading the books are actually useful in order to better understand what’s going on.
Now, I’m a firm believer of watching something in its original language. Dubbed version just pisses me off. In the case of films, you get to hear the actor’s real voice. If it is some voiceover instead, the whole film will feel fake to me. The character's voice will not match the lip movement and in some cases, the way they say things are completely different. In the case of anime, the argument gets quite complicated since the characters are, well... animated so the lip movements will not be exact anyway. But, I suppose most anime production companies in Japan will collaborate to a certain extent with the manga authors, so the Japanese character voices will be closest to what the original manga author intended them to be. Anyway, it’s certainly not that hard to use a few spare brain cells and read subtitles.
So, I was extremely aggravated when I found a few comments on the web about Night Watch:
“Hopefully the second one will get dubbed someday so I can watch it also.”
“Now I will be able to understand this.” – referring to the dubbed version.
“I went and saw this at the movies, and walked out cause I couldnt be f*cked reading the subtitles.”
Okay, is it so hard to read subtitles? Do you actually go to the extent of not watching it if the dubbed version is not available? Are you kidding me? Lots of foreign films are not (nor would I hope that they will be) dubbed, so if you can’t be bothered to read subs you’re actually missing out. Which is a shame really, since there are many good ones that deserve people’s attention.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just get annoyed sometimes, because not making an effort to read subs just seems like being lazy to me.
Yaz.
Start of term was the 17th January, which was last Thursday. My new year/term resolution is to study hard, and I thought if I put it here it’ll motivate me more since now you guys know about it.
Oh, and stop pestering me about the study hard/smart thing: about how you’re supposed to study smart instead of hard and all that jazz. It’s rubbish anyway.
I realised that I haven’t been reading a lot of books for a while, and felt guilty about it since there are books that have sat on my bookshelf for ages without me touching them. So my second resolution is to read more, and in keeping with this spirit I also bought some more books from Amazon today. The second and third book of the Night Watch series, Mark Haddon’s second novel, and the His Dark Materials Trilogy (which lots of people in Cambridge say is good; and the first book, Northern Lights was made into a film called The Golden Compass, though I have no idea why they change the name). I bought them in bulk to take advantage of the Amazon’s free delivery for above $15 purchases.
Here’s my current bookshelf which I intend to fill. Don’t comment on how few books are there, since I brought home a lot of the books during my last flight to Malaysia.
Finally, I forgot to collect Nectar points on my Amazon purchases. This always happens! Drat!
Yaz.
If you haven’t watched it, then I suggest that you do, if only to gain a better understanding of the current issue. I would describe An Inconvenient Truth as a layman’s guide to understanding global warming, so even if you don’t have a deep enough scientific knowledge, you can still follow the arguments. That is to be expected though, since the film is mostly directed towards American viewers, of which (unlike the rest of the world), there still exist a fraction of them that actually denies or are sceptical about global warming, and most of these people don’t have deep scientific knowledge.
Of course, being a documentary film that tries to present a point of view, I noticed that there are parts here and there in the film that are susceptible to embellishments and exaggerations. Plus the fact that Gore actually pours a lot of his emotions throughout the film. However, overall, it’s a well balanced and quite accurate depiction of the issue of global warming and unlike a dry science presentation, the fact that the film is interlaced with emotions actually keeps us interested to watch the film until the end, thus making it effective. So go and watch it, if you haven’t. It’s good for you.
Yaz.
Okay, as you guys can tell from my previous blog post, I was having troubles with my laptop when it suddenly crashes and gives me the blue screen of death while I was consolidating my music files. I then restarted everything and while no files are lost, the computer became very sluggish and jerky. I tried defragmenting it the next morning but it gave me the blue screen of death again, which is really annoying. Sensing an impending doom, I quickly backed up all my media and important files onto my external hard drive.
Right, there wasn’t anything much that I could do at that moment. The computer was slow but even with several restarts, I can’t fix it. During breakfast a friend of mine said (probably joking in an evil way) that three or four years sounds about right for the lifetime of a computer. I was like... nooooo! I am planning to buy a brand new laptop before I graduate, now that I have a credit card and all, but certainly not this soon. And to top it all, this is my first computer! I bought it using my own money. Well, computer allowance money actually, but it’s still my own.
Still, since nothing is working (the computer’s operational, it can surf the internet and everything, I just don’t know how to get rid of the lags) I considered wiping the hard drive clean. Erase everything and just start all over again. Of course, the problem with this is that I don’t have any Windows XP installation disks. Somehow, when I bought the computer, they never gave me one. Therefore, if something goes wrong during my hard drive reformatting, I’ll be stuck.
Of course, there’s the wonder of the internet (and Lifehacker). I searched their site and found that somebody has posted a comment on an article about hard drive reformatting: Dell computers (some of them anyway) have a PC Restore function. Basically, they have a hidden partition in the hard drive that contains an image of the drive when they first shipped it to you. This can be accessed by pressing CTRL+F11 during start-up and it will erase everything on your hard drive and restore it to the original condition like when you first take it out of the box.
So, I spent the whole of today’s morning thinking about it. Should I, or shouldn’t I? It’s irreversible, so if something goes awry I can’t really do anything at all. But then I’ve backed up most of my data anyway. So my fingers hover on the figurative big red button until...
... I pressed it.
I restarted the computer, waited until the big Dell with the white bar came up, and pressed CTRL+F11.
The PC Restore thingy came up. It asked me if I want to restore or reboot (normal start-up). I clicked restore, confirmed it and...
This is it, then. No turning back.
Finally, after about five minutes, it’s over. And no, I’m not kidding, getting rid of everything takes just five minutes.
Rebooted again, and I was greeted by the computer thanking me for purchasing Dell. Yay!
What do you know, I have a spanking new computer! Well, new in terms of the ... things inside it anyway. So, after the initial fill this and that, getting rid of the crap software that Dell bundled into my computer, and downloading 86 Windows automatic updates, my computer's ready to be used! Of course, I then have to install all the necessary programs again (McAfee, Firefox, WinRar, iTunes etc) and copy all my pics and music back into the computer but they’re not too bad. So now (since it’s ‘new’) it’s going really fast again.
Well, that’s all that I did today. It’s a good thing, the PC Restore feature. Next time something goes terribly wrong and I can’t be bothered to figure out what’s going on, I’ll know what to do.
Yaz.
Just received some letters from the bank. Apparently they increased my overdraft limit by £500 to £1750, which is very nice of them though I doubt I will be reaching the limit anytime soon, if such a time exists. Unfortunately, they didn’t do anything to my credit card limit. A friend told me that maybe that’s due to the fact that I never use it, so I guess I’ll use that more often instead of my debit card.
Just watched a pretty amazing film this afternoon. Unfortunately I can’t put it down here since it might tell a bit too much (or maybe too little) about myself, so I’ll leave it at that. Heh heh heh.
Sorry for being so cryptic =)
Yaz.
