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7月19日 Secret Chinese Military BaseOK... I'm bored at work. The guy I'm supposed to be working with on the project came in at 10, made some coffee, and left at 12 to go to a doctor's appointment, and thus took the whole afternoon off. Both my boses came in to work at 10 (and I was there from 9!), and now they've supposedly gone off to the hospital to see patients.
Browsing around sites that I haven't visited for ages, I spotted this article on The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/huangyangtan_mystery/
Some guy has been scouring Google Maps, and found a picture of an military base:
 As you can see, the area on the left has been landscaped, complete with mini lakes, snow capped peaks, and rivers. Now, some other jobless guy decided to find out which area the Chinese government decided to make a model of, and came up with this:
 Looks familiar? The area on the bottom is the border between China and India!
A closer look reveals the meticuluous attention to detail:
 Pretty bizzarre eh? One theory is that the Chinese government is using the model as a training area for their troops and helicopters. At least now we know if China goes to war with India, they'll have the upper hand in navigating those mountains on the border... 6月17日 HolidaysAhh... I now know why almost every household has a TV. Granted, it serves very little educational purpose, but its useful to fill in those times when you're waiting for your day-old pizza to reheat in the microwave, when you're waiting for the bathroom to be empty, or just when you have nothing else to do. Although I must say some programs are just wierd... like Big Brother. But you do learn some useless bits of information through TV... like it was reported just now that 60 sheep were herded across the Millenium Bridge yesterday. Why? Don't ask...
World cup is finally upon us, and the atmosphere here in London is pretty upbeat. Everyone seems to believe that England have a chance to win or at least make it to the finals... my opinion: "only if unicorms exist" (which we all know do exist in the woods behind Hogwarts). I must give credit to where it is due however... England do have a decent team, although why Ericsson does not play Walcott having gambled his reputation and the public's opinion of his sanity on it is beyong my comprehension. Brazil seem the favorites... although with Ronaldo playing, there is now the possibility that they won't make it very far. The weather has been decent.. nice and warm! Plan for the week coming up... see the BodyWorks exhibition, go for a concert and a musical, spend a whole day at the o2 Wireless Festival at Hyde Park, and unfortunately, spending 2 days for the union officer training. And all throughout that... wathcing the odd smattering of world cup! 6月4日 Short Entry I know I have been neglecting updating my blog, but the combination of exams and FaceBook is a lethal one to The Cookie Jar.
Anyways, for those of you who are wondering what's taking up 23 out of the 24 hours of my day (with the last hour dedicated to FaceBook, or course :D), the following is a picture of what I have to learn to draw for my exam:
For those of you who don't personally know me: No, I'm not a primary school kid who just happens to know how to code HTML. Rather, its an image from my Software Engineering course, and the diagram is apparently one used in software companies all over the world to plan their software design. The stickman is... the user of the program. The bubble shows how the user is meant to interact with the software. If this is what managers in IT companies do 9 to 5, I am so applying for a job at a software company when I graduate. But then, I might end up having a boss who's still in kindergarten, cuz noone draws stickmen better than those lil brats.
5月16日 Facebook!!Can't believe it took so long for Facebook to come to Imperial College!! and at the worst time too, just before we have exams.
Anyways, now that there's facebook... I don't have enough time to keep posting blog entries on a regular basis. But its not like I can write really long rambling stuff on facebook either. So at some point in the near future, I will be returning to my blog to write more stuff, but at the moment.... everyone head over to facebook!! And leave something on my wall for me :D 5月3日 Hamster rabiesARGGHH!!! The hamster bit me!!! That evil creature... with its shiny round black eyes that just stare into nothingness. Now i know why people want to keep dogs or cats instead of hamsters. At least with a dog, he/she (it?) knows who has the food and thus who not to bite. Just for that, I'm going to purposely NOT feed the hamster any corn in his food mix. Serves his right... he can have pine nuts for the next few days!
Anyways, I've just realized that I hadn't updated my blog in a long long time. I guess some of you are getting fedup with reading about waffles and waffling... so there's a whole lot of catching up to do!
First off, exams went better than I expected. Medical Science was a breeze as I'd predicted 4 out of the 5 questions coming up, and had memorized 2 page answers for each of them. Signals & Systems was a bit challenging... made a really stupid mistake on the first question, but I think overall I should be fine. Next exams are in early June.
Its funny how things can change over the course of a year. Just last spring around this time, I was so adament about not going to the library that I did not set foot in it once during my exams. I had borrowed and hoarded all the textbooks I needed back then before the easter holidays. But now, all I can ever think about is the library. I might be having lunch, and I would be wondering if my usual spot on level 4 has been taken. Or I would be having dinner at home, and thinking I could be having dinner in the library (don't tell the security guards what I just said!). Anyways, I think I've grown... fond... of the library. I'e noticed that because I keep sitting in the same table, other library hardcore wannabes know where to seek me out to raid my food stores. Without fail, I always seem to have pringles, kitkat, chocolate, mandarins, and "snack of the day" hidden in the depths of my bag.
The other day, while taking a break from studying (and subconsciously feeling guilty about it), I went with a friend down to covent garden and leicester square to bum around and do some shopping. One tip for guys who are going shopping with girls: if they wish to stop by Accessorize, make sure its the one in Trocadero. That way, when you get bored of tying the scarves into knots, you can pop by next door to the candy shop and load up on cola chewies. And make sure she doesn't see Claire's next door either! :D OK, fine, I will admit.. I was just kidding. I actually enjoyed the experience at Accessorize. Got myself a string that goes round the neck with a piece of metal at the end (can't quite seem to get myself to type the N word), and tried on some really cool scarves. A pity winter's another 7 months away!
Anyways, here are some pics from my trip to Covent Garden: 4月8日 Waffles and.... wafflingI needed a good holiday, somewhere to get away from Imperial College and everything associated with it, and I found it on my trip to Brussels. There's something comforting in just leaving everything behind, and escaping to a brand new world, even for just a few days. All in all, my trip was quite successful... went to an art museum (I never knew there were so many famous Belgian artists!), a musical instrument museum, and saw the famous statue of a little boy pissing into a fountain. We stayed at an amazing hostel... called 2Go4 Quality Hostel. I swear all their furniture was from Ikea, but their rooms are really neat and modern, keycard entry at the front door and to rooms, plus 2 huge plasma screens in their common area. In terms of food, we were spoilt for choice every meal... I kept wishing that there were more than 3 meals a day, and that I was actually fat so that I would have a bigger stomach capacity. My cholesterol is probably through the roof after two meals of mussels and fries, and it probably is a good thing I decided not to donate blood today. Pity the guy (or girl) who gets my blood... they would die of a heart attack right after!
Waffling on, I won't waffle about the waffles I had over there (I could probably write books about all the different waffles I had), but I will waffle on about the Eurostar journey, as it was the only blemish in an otherwise perfect trip. Normally, it takes about 3 hours to get to Brussels from London Waterloo. However, on that fateful Monday morning, it just so happened that the train in front of us going to Paris got stuck in the tunnel. So our train waited outside the tunnel for about an hour, before it was decided that we should go in and pull the other train out. Both trains then started making their way back towards Waterloo, when someone decided a better idea would be to transfer all the passengers on the first train to mine, and just send the faulty train back. So that process took around 2 hours. And then we finally made out way to Lille, where we dropped off the passengers for Paris, and then on to Brussels. All in all, we were meant to arrive in Brussels around 9, but in the end got there close to 4. To compensate for our "misfortune", they gave us a free voucher for any future Eurostar journey, which was great because now I could go to Paris for free! However, as fate would have it, we missed out train back, and had to use our vouchers to catch the next train. I'm still undecided as to whether that was good luck, or bad luck.... good in the sense we didn't have to pay to get a ticket home, or bad luck because that voucher is worth about £100 on eBay, and would have nicely covered the cost of our entire journey to Brussels.
I do have photos of the boy pissing in the fountain and various other photos of Brussels, but unfortunately they're on the Mac side of my computer instead of the Windows side, and thus inaccessible. I will upload them ASAP.
Waffling on... When I was in Brussels, something struck me as ironic. There I was trying to see all Brussels has to offer in 3 short days, whereas I've lived in London for nearly 2 years and there are still tourist places I've never been to. For example the Tate Gallery, or Westminister Abbey. And yet there are times in London where I feel bored and have nothing to do. So my Easter Holiday Resolution is to try to get more out of London. I have drawn up a list of things I want to do, and starting from tomorrow I'm going to tackle them one by one. This includes going to the Tate Gallery, the Political Cartoon Gallery, the special exhibition at the British Museum of Michelangelo's Drawings, the Photographer's Gallery, watching Guys & Dolls the musical, and eating at Hummus Bros in Soho. As everyone I know seems preoccupied in entering the Guiness Book of Records for the longest time spent in a library, I expect I'll have to do all these things on my own, which is a bummer, but which also means I have absolute freedom as to when to go and how long to stay. But its always nice to have company, and if anyone is interested in coming along, feel free to drop me a message. Oh, and I forgot one more thing for my list: watching Ice Age 2. There's something about that squirrel that cracks me up...
4月1日 April Fool's Day!!Ahh.... you know April has finally arrived when you something ridiculuous happens. For me, I actually had a pretty much prank-free day, as I spent most of it just doing work and going to the swimming pool. But one thing did catch my eye: Google's April Fool's day prank. It starts out with an ad on their homepage: "New! Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance." Once you click through, you get to a site that looks genuine, promising to solve your dating problems using their sophisticated search technology. Their "Take A Tour" page is pretty funny (http://www.google.com/romance/tour.html), and for those guillible enough to fall for Google Romance, their signup form (http://www.google.com/romance/profile.html) gives away the game by revealing its an April Fool's joke.
Past April Fool's jokes from Google include this classic one, where they explain how their search system works (http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) by using pigeons. I was expecting to receive loads of emails today with fake news and ridiculuous offers. But as it stands, my mailbox has only received its usual load of "enlarge it now!" and "Viagra pills for cheap!". On this note, it is surprising to see that most of the junk email I get on my IC account has to do with software sales, such as for Office or Windows XP, whereas most of the ones to my other email accounts are of a dodgier nature. I've never doubted that spammers are actually very smart business people in real life... and if they're getting into junk mail, that means that there's easy money to be made there. Those poor grandpas sitting at home buying all their viagras and heart medication through dodgy sites... 3月27日 Blog 2 of the holidaysWow, how fast time seems to fly. It felt so strange today, waking up at 8:30 and not having to put on my clothes while brushing my teeth and making hot chocolate at the same time. The night before I had watched American Beauty for the first time. Its one of the those movies which you keep hearing of or seeing the poster of everywhere, even many years after it came out. But to say the least, it was a shocking movie. Its one of those that tries to get beneath the gloss of society and show everything that's wrong with it. There's the family that looks perfect on the outside, but all 3 of them hate each other. And then there's the stalker and drug dealing son, with a homophobic dad who ironically turns out to be gay. And then there's the slutty chearleader who tries to seduce every guy she meets. "Welcome to America" should have been the title of the film
Moving on, I've decided not to go on the trip to Paris. Its quite last-minute to pull out, seeing how I'm meant to leave tomorrow, but seeing how the situation in Paris isn't going to improve, its best to stay in London and remain safe (well, relatively safer). I'll lose around 50 pounds for the eurostar ticket and accomodation, but that's a small price to pay to have my limbs remain attached to my body. I feel especially bad as if I had decided to go, then one of the girls would have gone too, and another would go as well. But as I dropped out, the first girl dropped out, and the second had to drop out as well as she was the only one left. I do feel bad about pulling out, but I think I made the right decision, both for myself and for them.
Why is it that everything I do, I tend to overdo? I didn't go to Pizza Hut the whole of my first year in London, and suddenly over the last 3 weeks I've been like 5 times. And its not like the pizzas there are that good either... I know better places for cheaper as well. But there's something about Pizza Hut... maybe they add drugs to it... Anyways, I'm vowing off Pizza Hut for at least the next 3 months!
3月26日 Fun at last!!It feels so good to finally not have to worry about lectures! Normally on a Sunday afternoon my mind would be going into overdrive thinking how to squeeze in 20 hours of required work into 10. But it turned out to be a n exceedinly fun afternoon, with a group of coursemates coming over to partly celebrate Vasu's birthday (which was last Monday, but the celebration was delayed because of work) and partly just to chill out.
The change to daylight saving came today. Its a good thing it happened on a Sunday, as I had totally forgotten about it... well, not forgotten, but was unaware of it! I woke up at 9:30 as I had to meet someone at 10:30, thinking that I would give myself ample time to have breakfast and fuss over my basil houseplant. I was having my OJ and catching up on updates on who killed who in Iraq when I realized that my computer clock was showing 10:45 instead of 9:45. Still not realizing it was daylight saving, I changed my clock back to 9:45, dismissing it as my computer acting up. It was not till Farah sent me a text about the daylight saving that the lightbulb above my head slowly switched on from 0W to 60W. And then the friend who I was supposed to meet calls me up, saying he'll be late... around 11. Realizing I was still in my PJs, I quickly changed, brushed my teeth, combed my hair seconds just before he knocked on my door.
You know all the news about drug cartels and how they're screwing over those poor crack addicts... I seriously think the Fair Trade Bureau is spending too much time having "research expeditions" in the scenic mountains of Columbia and not enough visiting the high street supermarkets on a Sunday. All 3 supermarkets on High Street Ken (Marks & Sparks, Somerfields, and Waitrose) only open at 12 noon. I know, because I went to all 3 in the quest for juice and chips. Now, In a competitive market, one of them would open earlier in order to capture the early morning crowd. There were like 10 ppl waiting in front of Somerfields at 11:30 (me included). Anyways, I guess we don't have it as bad as 20 years ago. I've heard many a time from my parents that during their time in London shops didn't even open on Sundays.
I watched Battle Royale last night. In short, its a typical Japanese movie: simple story line, shocking, and leaves you saying "wow" afterwards, but also wondering why you just wasted 2 hours. I think i'm going to stay off Jap movies for a few months, and stick to comedies. Which reminds me, Ice Age 2 is coming out the Friday after next, and I'm definately going for it! I don't care what everyone says... but Ice Age 1 was pretty good ('tho not as good as Shrek), and I haven't been to the cinemas in ages!
3月21日 Is the world spinning backwards?After a two week hiatus of not updating my blog, I've finally felt that it's no point procrastinating and that I should give all the followers of my blog an update of what's been going on in Boon's World. Yes, there are now 200+ of you who have visited within the last 4 weeks, and I'm honored that through crap articles and good articles, you've all come back time and time again.
Its hard to imagine that I'm now more than halfway through my course. The second term of the second year is ending in just a few days, and although I'm happy that I'm now closer to the end than to the begining, it sometimes feels as though that time has passed really quickly, too quickly in fact. I still remember when I was back in UWC Singapore, how all of us guys would be playing CounterStrike or Warcraft in the evenings. Its been a long time since I've had the luxury of having time to play computer games or watch TV. But I quite enjoy this transition state at the moment... where I'm no longer a kid, but not quite yet an adult.
In terms of work... I'm past the peak of the mountain, and from now on its all downhill till the end of the week! Mechanics presentation finished, Heat & Mass project more than half done, and my french revision going on nicely. Can't wait till easter is here!
Today, I found myself opening a can of worms. I made a decision on behalf of the bioeng society without consulting the other committee members. I knew I would get some flack, and yet I still went ahead with the decision. Perhaps my subconscious was looking for an excuse to provoke some kind of confrontation, a way to release all the stress that has been building up inside. Anyways, I had expected a confrontation to get me all worked up, but for some reason I just really couldn't care less when it happened. Anyways, I'm not one to hold grudges for long, and I tend to forgive people quickly for things they do, even if they hurt me. But there was this one incident today, which really just shook me up inside. This person just attacked me out of nowhere, and I was truly shocked at being stabbed in the back. And some people just take it upon themselves to keep reminding others of mistakes they have made in the past. I wasn't even talking to him or saying anything bad about him or anyone else, and out of the blue these poisoned words just come out. I had forgotten and forgiven similar episodes he's repeatedly done in the past, but enough is enough and there come a point when a person can't keep forgiving.
Anyways, on a lighter note, my basil houseplant resurrected itself from the dead! If it continues healing at this rate, I'll be able to have fresh basil with my pasta next week! :D
My Mac Mini is so much faster than my dell laptop, and takes up much less space as well! Also, I've managed to install Windows on it (couldn't resist!). Otherwise, how would I be able to keep updating my blog for all you readers out there? :D
3月14日 Oh lala....List of what's been going on this week in my life:
1) Work
And next week:
1) Work OK.. my life isn't all that bad. I still have the occasional 15 minutes for a shower, and 5 minutes to play with the Bioeng hamster. There are, however, a few good things coming up, like my new Mac Mini. For those of you with considerably more time than I have, you can follow the travels of my new desktop as it makes its way off the factory floor in Shenzhen, China till it arrives on my doorstep in London: >click here 3月11日 Why I'm not a farmer...Ahhh... its been a while since I wrote my last blog entry (exactly 10 days ago). How time passes. It seemed like only yesterday that I started my first day back from winter holidays.
Anyways, out of impulse, I had bought a houseplant last week. This wasn't any ordinary houseplant... I decided since I would have to give it water, look after it, and give it space on my window sill, I might as well get something back. So I went for a basil plant... that way, whenever I feel the urge to have tortellini or carbonara spaghetti, I had something to mask my bad cooking skills.
Unfortunately, I've come to realize I don't have green fingers, and I don't understand what I've done wrong. I've given it a small amount of water everyday, left it on my window sill to get some sunshine. I've even played classical music to it, hoping the genius of Prokofiev would spark some growth. See the pic below of my plant on the verge of death.
Speaking of classical music, I had borrowed a few music books from the Victoria public library a few weeks ago. Having signed up for the online access service, I had assumed that when the due date came by, I would get an email or some sort of heavenly sign that I was close to being fined for being overdue.
Nada
I came across the music books this morning while organizing my desk (for those of you literary geniuses who read between the lines and try to squeeze hidden meanings when there are none: I usually organize my desk every 2 weeks, but I've been rather busy... or distracted... lately). Due date: 2nd March. Using my trusty iBook, I fire up Safari and a few mouse clicks later I'm into my library account, and I get this big fat pop-up telling me to contact the library staff about my overdue books. *SIGH* as if I don't have enough things to keep me occupied next week... 3月1日 When the going gets tough...... I just feel like digging a hole, and quarantine myself in a hatch-like structure like the one in Lost. Why is it that as humans, we always want to push ourselves to be better, to do more, to want something that's hard to get?
Walking down the street, I see people laughing, people in high spirits. I wonder how their life is like. Do they have to worry about attending 28 hours of lectures/labs/tutorials a week, do they have multiple courseworks due in at the same time, do they have to worry about what kind of jobs they're going to get when they graduate?
Someone once said "with great power comes great responsibility". I believe that "with great reward comes great amounts of work". Lets not kid ourselves... we're all at Imperial College, aiming for a degree and an education that we believe will give us the tools to better jobs. But has anyone wondered at what cost that advantage is coming at? We only live for around 80 springs, yet I've found that the last 4 springs have been spent worrying about exams. Does the guy working at the corner shop have any less of a fulfilling life than we would being a renown researcher, or a top executive at a company? Sure, we'll be able to afford higher quality material items that supposedly bring more joy to our lives. But in the path to this higher quality of life, are we spending too much time on work and neglecting to appreciate the world around us? Are we missing out on meeting that significant other because we hole ourselves up in the library studying?
Just the other day, I was at KFC with a few friends, savoring our last Original Drumstick before bird flu hits the UK. We spent 10 minutes wolfing down our food, and the next hour or so chatting. And I have to truly say... even though it was in the basement of a dodgy KFC, we had a few good laughs and a good long discussion. We didn't need a pricey Starbucks, or to be on a beach in Barbados to have fun. We had fun for the price of 3.99.
Alot of people will say that at this stage of life, we should have the 900 out of the 1000-piece puzzle fitted together, with the rest of the pieces falling into place. For me, it feels like the 900 pieces are still jumbled up, with some wrongly connected. 2月22日 Excercise > MeditationI have finally found the perfect way to get me motivated to study... going to gym or to the pool. I've noticed that i've been spending way more time studying nowdays, and I attribute that to the frequent trips to the sports centre. I guess running on a moving belt or swimming back and forth on the same 25m length of water makes my mind docile. Otherwise, it's usually in its hyper-active state, always looking for a distraction or something else to do when there's work in front of me. Maybe all the extra endorphins are calming my mind... just like some drug users claim that they work better under the influence. The mind is a very complex thing...
There are many things that when i look back, I think to myself "oh, that was stupid" or "I can't believe I made decision". But I guess in the moment, its sometimes hard to make good judgements, and the best we can do is to learn from our mistakes. Lately I've observed the behaviour of two friends whom I know well change quite dramatically. They're doing things that they won't normally do, trying to achieve something which, although noble, is likely to fail or is not worth the effort. A few days ago, I realized that life is not about choosing a set of values right from the beginning, and sticking to it no matter what and hoping it works. Life is about constantly evaluating decisions that have been made, actions that have been done, and then remedying any problem. These two friends I mentioned... I so want to tell them that they should re-evaluate what they're doing. But then, would they be likely to trust the opinion of another person over their own, and isn't it always best to learn from personal experience? and this feeling... of knowing that something is going to happen, but yet powerless to stop it... is probably one of the worst possible ever. 2月19日 Berlin Trip!!Just got back from my Berlin trip. Amazing place! Anyways, i've uploaded the pics to my photo album on this blog, and I'll be posting a blog entry in the days to come!
OK... its been a few days... but I haven't found the time yet to update about the trip to Berlin. The only thing I will say is that I might have bought way too much chocolate back, so you'll be seeing me with my Ritter Sport and Kinder chocolate 24/7 2月14日 Haagen Dasz Bars for 10p!Its not often that you find outrageous deals that are 1) real and not some scam and 2) is on a product that you actually want or have use of. So its with great surprise that I find a Haagen Dasz Ice Cream Bar for only 10p at Tescos!
To be fair, its only available if you order online, and delivery costs 4 pounds. But if you were already planning to do some shopping, it might be worth adding a few of these bars to your shopping basket. Hell, it might even be worth just adding 50 of these, thereby getting 50 top quality ice cream bars for only 9 pounds! Of course, you'll need to have the freezer space to store all 50 (or have an ice cream party?).
Anyways, check out the pics below for confirmation:
2月11日 New IC Sports CentreIt was talked about for the year and a half I've been at Imperial College. It was meant to be completed when I entered in October 2004. It was then meant to open by October 2005. All these delays were attributed to "design" problems, with rumors saying it stemmed from putting the swimming pool on the top floor and not taking into account the weight of the water (what does this say about the civil engineering department at IC?)
Nevertheless, it opened with no great funfare on the 1st of Feb, and today was the first day I actually made use of the sports hall. Now, I wasn't planning to go swimming today, but after 2 hours of EE revision, I felt that I needed a break. I was initially quite reluctant... with Imperial College, it could be safe to assume that the population of geeks is a high percentage, and therefore many of these geeks might be staying at home on a Saturday night and decide to go swimming. Now, there are two categories of geeks... hardcore ones, and normal geeks. The hardcore ones would stay in on a Saturday night with the intention of doing work, and would actually follow through with it. The moderate geeks, myself included, would have the intention to do work, but would get sidetracked and end up doing other things, like swimming.
Although I was elated when I found the pool to be relatively empty, the subtle message inbetween the lines did not escape me... that of the geek population at Imperial College, it seems that hardcore geeks are a more common species than moderate geeks. An alternative explanation would be that most of the students at Imperial College are not geeks and are out partying on a Saturday night, but lets not start dreaming here...
Anyways, it feels good to swim after such a long time of hibernation. Although my muscles are currently aching, my mind has been nirvana-ized. Maybe I should be going swimming in the mornings before lectures... Let the games begin!It was with great anticipation that the 2006 Winter Oympics opening ceremony was staged last night. Now, I've never been a big fan of wnter sports before, having never had the opportunity to be on snow at all until recently. All I remember from the last winter olympics was watching some highlight reels on CNN, and thinkin "oh cool, I never knew there was a winter olympic".
Having just gone skiing for the first time 2 months ago, I was eager to at least try to follow this year's winter olympics. After returning from Ernest's house last night, I tuned in to CCTV5 on my computer, and voila... there were showing a repeat of the opening ceremony. For those of you who watched the opening ceremony for the Greek Olympics Games in 2004, you would have remembered that after all the dancing, hoo-ha, and parades, the big olympic torch suspended above the stadium was lowered and lit, which was pretty impressive and original.
So I watched the opening ceremony with great anticipation. First came a few dances, then a few hundred performers gathered together to make the shape of a skier going down the mountain. Then there was the long parade of countries participating in the games (including, believe it or not, Madagascar and Thailand). Afterwards, there were the boring speeches by so-and-so, and finally... the torch runner came out, ran two victory laps around the stadium, and ran down the main pathway to the torch. It was at that very moment, the moment I'd been waiting for for 2 hours, when the channel went blank and all there was in its place was static. It was as if someone had pulled the TV cable out of the TV! Whether it was a practical joke, or a genuine malfunction, I would never find out. That goes to show that bootlegged TV streams over the internet are never reliable.
Anyways, now I have something to occupy those times where I stare at the ceiling waiting for my food to be cooked or for my flatmates to finish using the bathroom. and perhaps, I might learn some advanced skiing techniques for my next ski trip :D 2月8日 JoggingI went jogging this afternoon, and it would have been like any other jog, except that I was tired of going through Hyde Park and seeing trees all the time, I decided to jog along sidewalks. The bad thing was... I had to stop often as people tend to walk in straight lines, blocking the entire pathway. I know I've been guilty of doing that before in a group, but now I realize the error in my ways, and I swear never never again to consciously form a line on a sidewalk.
The upside to my new route was that I discovered it was so much more fun looking at shop windows then rows and rows of trees and the occasional squirrel in Hyde Park. Usually I'm consciously counting each step I take, but with jogging on sidewalks... I kept going even though I was tired as there was something to distract my mind from the aching calf muscles.
Another upside was that I now have a really good route. I start off down High Street Ken, turn to go up to Notting Hill, reach the station and come back to High Street Ken, go down the road next to Boots and end up at Sainsburys. There, I can stop and have a cup of coffee at the Starbucks inside, and maybe a slice of Sainsbury's cheesecake :D. From there, I jog down cromwell road to south ken station, up exhibition road, and turn left and jog back to my place. And the plus point is with something to distract my mind, I run longer and faster without wondering every second "am I there yet, am I there yet..."
On the subject of sports, I registered for the new sports centre. I was pleasantly surprised that the queue was only 10 minutes long. Even better, my gym induction is for next tuesday lunchtime! I guess good things do happen (but only once in a while for me :P). 2月7日 Someone actually reads my blog!Up till now, I've been suspicious that all my typos, my ramblings, and my boring musings have been all in vain, and noone, or very few people, have been reading them. Never mind that MSN Spaces is telling me that I get over 10 visits per day... I thought they were all from Google or hackers looking for a way to get into my computer. I now have proof that at least one person has been visiting my blog recently... I got a rather complimentary comment for linking to The Best Page in the Universe blog from my homepage. Now that I know that my words are being read, I should really try writing more quality stuff.
First off, just a quick recap of what's been happening worldwide. Radical Muslim protesters have been attacking Danish embassies worldwide for a cartoon published in a newspaper in Denmark. The Pittsburgh Steelers win the Superbowl, which was watched by over 40% of US households. However, although last year's Superbowl featured a "wardrobe malfunction", this year's was rather tame... the Rolling Stones were censored during their live gig. And... Chelsea beats Liverpool 2-0, and wraps up the Premiership with still 3 more months to go. What a party pooper. What good now is it to watch football if there's no competition?
Back to more personal items... I'm planning a easter trip to Switzerland, and its more or less wrapped up, with just a few people to make last minute confirmations. Given that the idea was only cracked late last week, its great progress. Ideally there should be 5-6 of us going, but at the moment it looks likely there will be only be 4-5. If anyone is interested in joining, please do give me a shout!
This term is shaping up to have a grand showdown... me vs. work & commitments. There's a bunch of lab reports due the last week, a french aural and written exam, not to mention the New Business Challenge and Science Challenge, both of which I'm really keen on joining, but am still at the planning stages. For the NBC, I have a team of 3 at the moment, which each team member having solid background and some interesting ideas so far. But what we really need is someone with an MBA degree... maybe I should poach an unsuspecting student! The science challenge... it looks cool, designing a bit of technology that will help us live on Mars. However, its hard to see how I can come up with something biomedical related. I'm still torn between forming a 100% biomedical engineering team and coming up with a related technology, or finding a range of other students and coming up with a grand "scheme of things".
Now that I have everything more or less sorted till April, its time to start making solid plans for the summer. I still haven't gotten that bank internship yet, but I've seen this very interesting UROP opportunity that I think I'll be applying for soon. More info to come over the next few weeks. |
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