To bring or not to bring - that is the question.

It's so stressful. I've thrown away about half of my room today - mostly paper waste though, so that's gone to the recycling bin. And then I have to decide what needs to go into the shipping boxes (i.e. stuff I wont need for the next 8 weeks), and what needs to go into my suitcases, and if it fits. Gosh. I've been packing for THREE straight days and am only just about done. Sighz.

I hate packing. I say this at the end of the every term, but yet, there's no escaping it. At least this will be the end of it.... I think.... (unless I decide to stay in the halls at NIE/NTU... hmmz)

Labels: Cambridge

Weee! I'm officially a Bachelor (of Arts). ;p

Still haven't got time to write fully though. Graduation was... interesting. It involved holding a finger of some praelector and lots of latin, and wearing gown + (pretend-to-be) rabbit fur hood. Also involved lots of photo-taking.

For now, it's to London!

Labels: Cambridge

Happy Times
(i'm meant to have pictures accompanying these accounts, except I haven't got them/I can't seem to get them loaded)
1. I went sculling on Friday in a double! And I didn't fall in! It can be quite intimidating, especially if you're a beginner sculler as I am. Thank goodness I had Sheila in the boat helping me along!

2. I received the most lovely present on Friday too! It's a water colour painting/print of all the boathouses along the River Cam and it's nicely framed up. I almost paid £125 or so, once upon a time, when the Cambridge Blue (a pub) was closing down and they were auctioning off a similar painting/drawing! It was a present from the lovely X-Press (Saturday) ladies as a thank-you and farewell gift! Thank you soooooo much!

3. I played Ultimate (Frisbee) yesterday and scored two - of which one was a spectacular dive. And may I add that it was such an awesome match, against St John's... We won 13-6 or something like that. Well, the rush of endorphins left me high for a while. :)

4. Was coxing the X-Press 4 at the Peterborough Regatta - we won it by a "country mile"! And it was such a pity I couldn't stay and cox the finals, cos I had to come back to Cambridge for my boat club AGM (yay! i've got a successor and I can hand over!). They came in 2nd in the end - and even did a push for Kenny. Considering we were the underdogs going into this event, we've done an amazing job!

But such tiring times as well. I've not slept in past 7.15am for an entire week. Even have to be up at 6.30am for the next 2 days. :( I'm almost ready for bed now at 10.20pm.

On the bright side, I'll be going on a school trip to the Imperial War Museum in London on Tuesday! swweeeeeeeet! And I've been on the bright side for a little too long today, and have gotten a little sun burnt.

Labels: Cambridge, Muses

This week is looking to be absolutely packed for me - packed with my school placement and coxing - both of which occupies my every waking moment. Take today for example - I woke up at 7.30am, cycled to school, and got there at 8.20am, left at 4.45pm, came back to college, got changed, and went coxing. Got back around 8.30pm. Well, it's gonna be like this pretty much this entire week. I was trying to find time to do some of my own things, and realised I've only got 2 hours today (which I used to attend a meeting in school), and 2 hours on Wednesday afternoon. Boohoo.

[as an interesting aside: my mentor and i walked into a class today to look for a teacher, and guess what the lesson was? sex education! and how did I know it? well, initially i thought i saw a really phallic looking salt grinder. And then I realised, it WAS a phallus (oh, how refined i am.... call it dick if you prefer. ;p)! And the reason they were having a dick in hand, other than being really naughty, is because they were learning how to roll a condom over it! gee. that's something we don't do in Singapore huh... though in Singapore, hmm... esp if it was a same-sex school!]

[oh, and also, i encounter a lot of new terms (non-subject related ones mostly), so I just nod and act like I know... lol. Like I attended this ENTIRE PSHE class, not knowing what the hell PSHE stood for. you can't blame me - they were learning how to write their CVs! (plus, it's NEVER my fault... ;p). And now I know. PSHE = Personal, Social & Higher Education. It's a bit like our CME I guess.... or the closest I can't describe it to.]

Oh, and this school placement is something I opted to do on my own - not MOE-directed in any way. I thought it'd be quite useful to get some ground experience from a school here, since the system here is quite different. Thus far, it's been really enjoyable. And somewhat more intensive than my school attachment last July at Dunman. (omg - i was actually funny once upon a time!)

And something to kickstart your Tuesday:
ERP comes to Pedra Branca!

And I missed Warship last week - so sad. And I also missed the first half of it today cos I was watching House. Still 30 minutes of it was awesomeness...

Kenny swoons over the HMS Illustrious... Sweeeeeeeet.....

The other members of the fleet.

Labels: Cambridge, Teaching

Hurray! It's over. My exams ended yesterday with the shittiest paper of it all. Everyone came out of the exam wondering WTF was that! And my exams ending on a Saturday is somewhat reminiscent of the Saturday lectures that we have... (they just had to do it...)

Anyway, instead of getting myself sillily drunk, I had a nice dinner with some friends, and ended up watching the finals of Britain's Got Talent - or rather, we missed the acts and caught the results show instead. And well, the winner was not much of a surprise really - George Sampson. He's a 14 year old break dance/dancer. As they say it - "Singing in the Rain" never seemed cooler than this: (this is the semi-final video btw. and if you think of it now that he's won, it's even a sweeter victory eh?)

I really love the rain coming down bit man....... The lighting, the music, the entire mood. INCREDIBLE! (trust me, you HAVE TO watch it...)

There were other worthy performances I guess, (videos below are from the finals)

• Ecala (click for the video), which is basically a Bond copycat - quite entertaining though. 
  
• Signature - a Michael Jackson impersonator (awesome) and his Indian counterpart. You might also want to catch their first round act. Signature came in 2nd btw...
• Kate & Gin - For your information, this is otherwise known as the dancing dog performance. You'd think, what's so great about a dancing dog - and then you watch it, and I think you'll be impressed too

Those were my favourites - if you click on any of the links above, there lots more links to the other performances.

And as promised, here's a shot of the Hugh Laurie boat.. it's apparently just called Laurie though....

Labels: Cambridge, Muses

Last exam of my undergraduate life tomorrow! In 8 hours to be exact. After the 90 minute paper (no half-time unfortunately. :( ), it'll all be over!!

Only problem is - revising for this course (Quantum Condensed Matter) has seriously made me lose the will to live. I know I said it last time, but this time it's bad. boohoo. I was looking at the past year papers, and one of the questions was to write brief notes on the Schottky barrier. And then I look at my notes, and the only time it appears is:

The semiconductor bands bend upwards, so that the donor levels near the interface are emptied of electrons - leaving behind a positively charged depletion zone, and a Schottky barrier.

And in case you're wondering, brief notes is kinda an essay plan without the essay. *scratches head at what i'm supposed to write about it if it comes out...*

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On the note of the "Last-of/Last" series - I'm on my LAST pad of foolscap paper that I brought over from Singapore 3 years ago! (well, we all know they don't sell foolscap paper here in the UK right? ;p) I've been amazingly stingy on these treasured pieces of fiber... loL.

Ok. Need to get some rest before the paper tomorrow.

Labels: Cambridge

Can't believe this deja vu illness. Last year, I caught a flu bug at the start of the exams, and it seems this year wasn't much different! I've taken enough medication/vitamins over the last 3 days to kill an elephant... And the worse bit was actually the headache that I woke up with today.

After 3 pills of Panadol Extra (interestingly, i got this panadol extras from Syria - and the extra bit is 65mg of caffeine. so not realising that initially, and having 2 cups of coffee this morning, i'd imagine some people might actually suffer a stroke or something from this high amounts of caffeine.

[imagine if i was taken to a hospital. Doctor: "it seems you have an exceptionally high level of caffeine in your blood, did you take any caffeine pills?" Kenny: "no i didn't!" well, if it was House, he start saying something about "Everybody Lies" - Houseisms]

"I don't ask why patients lie, I just assume they all do."

But I digress. So anywho, after 3 pills of Panadol Extra, the headache still won't go away - if anything, I think it got worst. So that left me moping about the whole morning/afternoon, because I couldn't concentrate at all on my revision (thank goodness I didn't have a paper today) - until I found that I had 2 pills of Nurofen left in my medicine box. Hurray! More pills! And it seems Nurofen works - within about 20-30 minutes of taking ONE tablet, I could feel my headache ebbing away, so I thought, ah heck, I'll take the last one as well. And now my headache is gone, and I feel like I've been "reborn".

And unbelievably, the lecturer for one of the courses recommended a book AT THE END of the course - which I find to be more useful than going for all the lectures! I'm about 1/3 way through the book now, hopefully I'll get through most of it tonight.

And I'm already starting to think of how to improve my seriously deprived social life of late after my exams... :)

Lol. Bleach 172 just came out today.

Labels: Cambridge

At this time, I'd like to say I've lost the will to live after looking through too much lectures notes & past-year papers. loL.

10.5 hours to my first paper!

5 days to the end of exams!

And kenny makes a mental note not to pour so much shampoo the next time he showers....

(PS: the first line is NOT meant to be taken literally....)

Labels: Cambridge

I've been kind of working hard today, but i got quite stuck on one of my past-year exam questions. The question is:

It is very easy to blow a candle out at a distance of, say 20cm - but difficult to suck it out. Why?

(no i'm not making this question up... it's in the 2002 paper, as a part of what i think is the fluid dynamics course).

Honestly, if i were to get this question in the exam, my answer would be - "Because we blow better than we suck! duhz!" Doesn't really take very much physics to answer it eh? ;p
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And I had a hair-cut today! The barber guy kind of took my "you can cut it short" quite literally and cut it VERY short. I guess it really was "value-for-money" in my case. But looking on the bright side, I'm not really going to be out v much this next week (exams... hur hur). And it's really not a horrible haircut - it's just horribly short... ;p

In case you've forgotten how my wonderful face looks like... ;p

Labels: Cambridge, Muses

The Creation
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Today, God said, let there be a blackout, and Churchill College was shrouded in darkness for an entire hour.

It's kinda weird having a blackout. I walked out of the shower earlier, came back to my room, and all of a sudden, the lights went out. How fortunate that I was already out of the shower. Finding my clothes in the dark in the shower won't have been very fun. Blackouts are such strange things - it makes me think about what people used to do without electricity, and thing is we feel so lost and we don't know what to do - the internet was down, so no MSN, the lights were off, so no reading. Although I'm sure naughty things will be quite good in the dark. We shall find out 9 months later whether or not this has been true.

Blackout aside, I'm on my final lap to the exams now. On Wednesday, I had my last ever lecture in Cambridge - on the Large Hadron Collider & Murphy's law. It might be a little hyperbolic, but there're lots of stuff that my "last" in Cambridge right now - like my last (& only) blackout, my last supervision.... I'm so gonna miss this place when I leave.

Sighz. At least there are other things to look forward to as well. I'll be coxing my last set of bumps in the Men's 1st VIII - what an honour. We've got a race tomorrow, so I guess I shall be doing some reading now before heading off to bed.

[edit] in fact, there were another blackout soon after we came back. but that was just for 2 minutes... ;p [/edit]

Labels: Cambridge

Hurray! I've actually started writing my essay - 500 words down. (2500 to go), although I've hit a writer's block now (creative juices have dried up!). But hey, they say getting started is the hardest bit. ;p

Norway pictures coming up soon!

Labels: Cambridge

It snowed! Last night! While I was asleep! ;p To think that it's spring will be foolish. But anyhow, every time there's snow, I jump at the opportunity to take some photos - out in the freezing cold. Here are some of the results, processed though, because the original shots were somewhat grey and gloomy.

#1:
Punt intended. But it was obviously too cold for this one.

#2:
One of the pillars in King's college that's meant to keep tourists (and students) from wandering off the Daffodil-lined paths. You can compare this shot with one from THIS POST, which I took 2 years ago in the summer and compare the difference.

#3:
A daffodil, about to collapse from the weight of the snow. Good thing the snow melted soon enough.

#4:
My college! (that's Churchill College btw..) The samurai warrior trio fights on, despite the snow. This is just one of the many sculptures scattered through the college, although this one's of my favourites...

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And I need to rest early today. The lack of caffeine flowing through my bloodstream is giving me a headache. (someone get me an IV-caffeine shot!)

Labels: Cambridge, Photography

Magnolia - What a terribly gripping movie, if not very long (3 hours!). It's quite old I know, but it was the first time I've watched it. It was really enjoyable though, and not in the Mary Poppins kind of spoonful-of-sugar type happiness, but the oh-my-f**king-goodness type of enjoyment. And somewhat depressing as well.

Towards the end of the show, there was this scene of raining frogs. And I was commenting on how that's technically not possible, since you'll need a incredibly high concentration of frogs to be sucked up, transported to the city, to be rained upon. But a search on Wikipedia reveals that it does actually happen, though the animals may not always be alive. (Article HERE). And the most interesting about it is that there's apparently a documented rain of fishes in Singapore once upon a time (in 1861), according to this source.

The note is entitled
“Shower of Fishes; earthquake at Singapore,” and was published in 1861:’

We experienced here an earthquake at 7: 34 m., February 16, that lasted about two minutes; it was followed by & rains, which on the 20th, 21at, and 22d became veritable torrents. The last day at 9 a. m. the rain redoubled in fury, and in a half hour our inclosed plot became a sea of water * * *.

At 10 o’clock the rainn lifted and from my window I saw a large number of Malays and Chinese filling baskets with fishes which they picked u in the pools of water which covered the road. On being asked where the fishes came from, the natives replied that they had fallen from the sky. Three days afterwards, when the pools had dried up, we found many dead fishes.

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In other random stuff, I found out that GDBO in a Cambridge context means God Damn Bloody Oxford! ;p All the best to CUW and CULRC who are racing tomorrow - go kick some dark blue asses!

Labels: Cambridge, Movies

Lately, Kenny Design Pte Ltd has been tasked with several jobs. The first of which was a Poster for a certain Physics in Action course, of which the result was this "Fundamental Forces for Dummies" poster...

It was quite an interesting conceptualising process though, starting with me wanting to do a "For Dummies" poster, and then wanting to use a chalk font, and then Darryl suggesting the use of an entire blackboard for the poster... Quite satisfied with it... =)

And then the 2nd and ongoing task, and the hardest task was the CUUNA publication (United Nations Association)... I'm not supposed to bitch about it publicly but I think you get the drift. ;p
Very professional I must say. It's taken more than 10 hours of full-time work on it, starting from scratch...

Also managed to get roped in for several photographic EXPLOITS jobs, including the Homerton Choir Concert, a recital, and the Abacus Annual Dinner, of which only the last was a paid job... tsk tsk.. Times are hard man... =X


Thank goodness term has ended! Hurray! Although the stuff for this term hasn't ended yet for me... boohoo....

PS: To hire the professional services of Kenny Design, you only need to leave me a comment. For you, Best price! Confirm good one!

Labels: Cambridge

It's been a surprisingly sober Boat Club Dinner for me, considering how hammered I was at the last one, and having to fly off the next day. =X I guess it helps when I'm sitting next to the Master (yupz, the Master of my college). In fact, I was even sitting in the Master's chair, since I was "presiding" over the dinner, which makes it all the more interesting for the Master i guess.

But all in all, a really enjoyable dinner. My speech was certainly much better than last term's I must say. hopefully we'll have the results to show for it in Mays.... =) will post pictures soon enough. (i say that all the time but it doesn't usually happen... ;p)

Labels: Cambridge, Rowing

Over the weekend was the CUMSA Annual Ball - with the theme as 881 this year, no doubt inspired by Royston Tan's getai mania. Of course it's something that I won't forget since I had so much trouble organising it last year. (Let's just say that the preceding year's ball usually sets the tone for the following year).

Some of my favourite photos from the night...
The Dai-gor... (check out the massive ring!)

The prim & proper & pretty ones... You decide who's which... =X

Kenrick the Cambridge Graduate... ;p

Chea Lu, my (ex-)college wife... muahaha.. she's since abandoned the kids and me to go to another college... tsk tsk...

Table Photo - we were obviously stuffing ourselves with Tiger beer.... and we were seated right at the back, much to our annoyance....

It sure was a fun ball, though the entertainment got a little draggy towards the end, when the dessert and coffee were finished but there were still performances going on....

Labels: Cambridge, CUMSA Annual Ball

Another dearth of posts I'm afraid...


Earthquake in the UK last night! The largest one since 1984 (i'm not even sure if there were any between then and now... ;p)

Sad to say, but I THINK i slept through it.. Well, it did happen at GMT 0056, and it was only for 10 seconds, and I was asleep already (need the rest man!). Although I swear I did get woken up, and was in a semi-conscious state, and I thought I heard people saying there was an earthquake in my corridor/staircase. I thought it was a dream then, and it rang a bell when people were discussing it this morning, so it must have been true.... loL.

Anyhow, i'll post soon enough. Too much bits of stuff to tidy up... =X

Labels: Cambridge, Earthquake

It's been such a busy CNY period that I'm so glad I finally get my time off now... Some things that I did included my annual Pineapple tart making cycle, CNY dinner at Uncle & Auntie Cho Mee (Auntie Sulina & Uncle Gerry)'s house, dinner at Jinling with the NatScis, watching Lion Dance at Market Square, and such... Though I must say, it's not quite as festive as it may seem.

1. Pineapple Tarts - I've only had time to make one big batch of it thus far. There're still 15 cans of pineapple sitting in my room at the moment... =X

2. Uncle Gerry. I kinda like this shot cos it has the "Chen" poster in the background, which is Uncle Gerry's surname... And he looks kinda relaxed and happy in this shot...

3. Lion Dance Performance by our very own CU Lion Dance Troupe. And the main lion is played by my neighbour Chris and Yijin.

I liked the ears in this next shot... Too bad they were performing in the shade, so it's a bit darker than it should have been...

What do you call the stupid doll head huh? I seem to recall that as a kid, I was quite scared of the doll, cos i think it looks rather freaky... Does anyone else think so too?

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I had my head-of-class discussion (i.e. viva) for my lab report, which had sucked up my entire first 3 weeks of term, today. Glad that I got an alpha-minus (i.e. A-) for it, which is as good as it gets really, since the highest mark given for my experiment was an alpha-minus.... At least the hard work didn't go to waste...

Labels: Cambridge, CNY

It's STILL foggy now. That's more than 24 hours of fog already. It's the worst fog of my 3 years in Cambridge and the only other time I've seen fog this thick was when i was in Venice in Dec 2005, resulting in my flight being cancelled (and my rock being confiscated, though the latter not a result of the fog... ;p)

To give you an idea of how thick it is:
When I was cycling to the boathouse this morning at 6.10am. It's a little out of focus too I think. =X

While we were out - the visibility was really down to less than 100 metres. It certainly was stressful steering the boat through the fog, the worry not so much about crashing into the banks (since I'm fairly familiar with the river), but crashing into other crews ahead, who might be coming the wrong way (as they often do.. idiots!) or stopped and not pulled in (idiots!)

[edit]Fog is a cloud in contact with the ground. Fog differs from other clouds only in that fog touches the surface of the Earth. The same cloud that is not fog on lower ground may be fog where it contacts higher ground such as hilltops or mountain ridges. Fog is distinct from mist only in its density. Fog is defined as cloud which reduces visibility to less than 1 km, whereas mist is that which reduces visibility to less than 2 km.
-source Wikipedia[/edit]

I actually have a few other things I can write about, but I shall save that for tomorrow. The busiest part of my term has finally passed (i think...), and today happens to be EXACTLY half way through this term. DAMN FAST! :( Today shall be my slack and watch anime day - I haven't had much of this lately...

Labels: Cambridge

It's so foggy out there that visibility is only a couple of hundred yards, and my hair was wet from the fog (actually dripping wet in fact) from just cycling back (only about 5 mins or so)... gosh... I hope my outing is cancelled tomorrow...

Labels: Cambridge