to be honest, i am flabbergasted at how we went home empty handed. here were the other entries.

if i'd known, I would have continued singing KTV. if we were told before hand like the winners were told beforehand,  i would have stayed at home. maybe we're like the sex pistols - i think we're awesome, but we've never won a single prize. really. like you'd think by now we'd have come closer to winning something. 

it's all right, we'll keep trying

holidayyy

So here's what I've been doing the past week or two: 

Watching TV shows: namely the Simpsons, which i still have a lot of. The rest i've actually watched in between studying for exams :/

Conquering China - it's the strategy game Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11. Not exactly fun in the fun sense but strangely addictive. I guess it's just about conquering everything. This screenshot is my army about 4 cities away from conquering the entire China. 

AIESEC Speak out for Red - took just a full day of our efforts but i think it's pretty decent. Fingers crossed that the organisers don't do something stupid to make me curse and swear at them. 

Zhenggg guitars - clockwise - family of three electrics, heavily modified masterpiece mockingbird, washburn superstrat with custom finish (using duct tape) and NEW cloud inlays, acrylic mockingbird with NEW bird inlays. Probably going to zheng them again, just unsure with what. Waiting for the little killer pickups to arrive from the US (thanks JAC! :D) so I can replace the stock washburns.

Many of my friends appear to be rather awesome photographers. Judging from how awesome they made me look in these pictures:

By Ahmad! 

By Zed!

One of chang's cool ass shots with the cool ass lens which costs waaayyy more than that guitar (which cost me alot)

aaaand. A little gig from my band again! Not so pro but i guess we are decent. If you guys want to watch it's next monday (18th May 2009) at Music Dreamer Live Cafe. Here's the link for FACEBOOK USERS. Yup yup. To be honest I'm not that excited about it because i'm kind of lazy and performing is tiring. But I'm supposed to play the instrumental I played for fete so you can come down and watchhh =D. Oh by the way, theresacoverchargeof10.90whichincludesonenonalcoholicdrink. 

Next up, still in the midst of thinking of stories for crowbar awards. But i highly doubt theres a real chance of coming up with winning visuals simply because we're not really equipped for it. To be honest every step of the way we've done are just making do with what we know, not actual skills training. Something that bothers me about going to BCS, is that we seem to be groomed to be behind the scenes paperwork handlers, promoters, and et cetera without knowing  the requisite technical skills to succeed and produce real good work. That's all well and good, I can readily admit we can analyse, break down and structure stories, scenes and plots quite well. But are we able to reverse that process and make something high-quality? Very difficult. And it shows - why are poly students able to create such stunning camera work and special effects while we are restricted to dramatic creations which are less impressive? The answer is training, we lack it severely. I mean, this is something I heard from Vincent himself (the media head of CS) - outside, to be endowed with BASIC proficiency in AVID people go through an intensive 3-week long course. CS people have to make do with three 1.5 hour sessions to learn AVID. Nothing close. Audio proficiency needs like one entire course just to get the basics right, but yet there is no real workshop that trains us in that. 

Droning on and on, but basically what I want to say is, if you are interested to act for our crowbar entry, or want to be part of the crew, can sound me out and i'll be sure to call you down! Hopefully an idea pops in  my head soon.

wham bam shazam

YESHHHH EXAMSS ARE BLARRRDY OVER!!! =D

That's for the happy stuff.

The sian-er stuff - well I'm broke-ish, means must find work. But wait! It's damn difficult to find a holiday job where employers are simply exploiting you with meager per hour pay to do the work of a cow. And to make it worse, I am not a PR, which is, WHOA, double no-hire. Okay, so I'm broke. But part of the reason of finding a holiday job is so I 'won't be bored at home' says my mom. 

Okay, I'm quite sure there are a million and one other things I can do to fill my time, writing screenplays, writing songs, going out to meet friends, make some short films, sleep? Isn't it important to sleep? I hate it that people who can only observe come in and say 'you should do this, you should do that' et cetera. Like 'you should work so you're not bored' - really, I think I'd be more bored if i settled for some telemarketing crap or what not. 

Ok, it's called summer break but I'm not break-ing anywhere. No such thing as a family holiday since the year 2005? That's a zillion years ago, much shits happened and by now both my sisters are working, and my parents can't leave the rented out apartment without people looking after it. Neither can they leave my house with the students inside unattended. Neither can they leave the maid unattended. One thousand one hundred and eleven excuses later, we're probably not going to go on a real holiday together for the rest of our lives. Excuses excuses excuses. And that probably means the next REAL holiday I'd ever get would be say, if I ever got married and went on a nice, long honeymoon. Yes, that's so fucking sad. I see some of my friends who have a missing family member, nonexistent family members, and stuff. My family's all here but they're not really here. So disconnected already so there's not much point in saying anything. Who ever asked my opinion whether we should move house or not? Nobody, cause apparently the entire family must follow the head of the household when he decides something is good for us. 90% of me thinks I'd be a ton happier if I were still staying at the old place, a quieter neighborhood, closer to some of the people whom I'd have been close friends with if I stayed. But no, of course - I guess nobody bothered to ask what would make the family happy.

And I've been proven quite right, eh. And now there are multiple dimensions of dislike, preferences and biases and I lost the words with which to hold a real, non-superficial conversation with them. Sucks. 

Anyway, money makes my world go round so far and yet I need more of it. What's new. Some birthday parties soon, maybe some stayovers, some things here and there, I hope I'll be happier than the last summer break. Maybe go for a quick (cheap) getaway with some friends, since the family won't budge. I guess we're all zombies now.

could it be could it be, that you're joking with me

I am great sadness that Arsenal lost to Chelsea. It's not even because they played horrible (ok mostly they did but....) but because of sheer dumb luck. If some Spaniard didnt bang into Almunia the way he did, Malouda's shot would've been saved and Drogba would probably not have scored. As a fan I'm chuffed that Fabianski chose the semi final to show his nerviness in a big game. 

Ok that's done and over with. 

I've still got two papers, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday, but I am sluggish stop-start at the studying thing. I really need to step out... 

Yeah I guess that's it. Hope one of my job applications get accepted beyond the 'Oh he's not even PR' rejection mark.

what the F

It's semi ridiculous I can't go home today anyway because my cousin is in Singapore, there are not enough rooms at my other house and she is thus sleeping on my bed in my own room.

Hello, privacy anybody?

As though thin wooden walls don't suck already.

cause i had a bad day

Today was probably the WORST exam experience I've ever had in NTU. The irony of which I studied really really hard for both exams, 455 and 803. For 455 time management was bad and so I didn't touch much of a 20 mark question (i.e. I'm fried). For 803, well... enough said. You could only realistically do it if you are an A level bio student or a Sch of Bioscience reject. 

See, other than just asking very tricky questions, the evil prof decided to add a new twist, which is to have 'more than one correct answer for the question - means if I ask, Which of the following is/are true?

• A.Lyon wants a Gibson Goldtop 
  
• B.Lyon wants a Fender Stratocaster 
  
• C.Lyon wants a Zoom G9.2tt 
  
• D.Lyon wants a nice pink handbag
  
• E.None of the above
  

You will only get the full marks if you circle all the correct answers! (In case you were wondering, A, B and C are true. Duh. =D)

Yeah, so imagine if the questions are like biology questions. For the arts student like me... I walked out the moment we were allowed to (1 hour earlier) because I was so disgusted and devastated that I could not do any more to improve or change any of my answers.

A lot of other shit that goes on especially towards the end of sem as I feel the pace of life slowing down. I dread the 3 month break because I fear that people will all disappear and I will have nothing to do. I dread the fact that, after this summer break, its Year 3 for real and an internship, and then FYP, and then working life for the rest of my life till I retire or I die trying to retire. I dread that the shit that has gone on in life will continue to get worse, and I dread that some things will remain never mine. 

I dread that some of my nightmares would come true, I dread that some of my realistic dreams will be inhibited by unapproving people, I dread that things will just go so horribly wrong I would be at a loss to explain it. I dread moving all these stuff in hall back home.

So today I will take a real breather (these past few days I've taken too many breathers while studying such as DYNOMITE which is really addictive, the SIMPSONS, some first person shooters, Football Manager, Champions League, and so on... =D) and not think about my remaining papers till Saturday or Sunday. After all, nothing, and NOTHING, could be more disastrous than the helplessness at doing the BS803 paper. 

because I know it won't belong to me anyway

well who says one can't dream and fantasize?

Today I felt the strongest need to strangle something/scream at something/curse at something - to the point of ridiculous proportions. The strange thing is, I really can't put it down to any single reason. Maybe it's just stupid exams knocking on our doors less than 10 days after the last assignments are due. That's why I'm looking forward to the 3 month breather where I can spend half the time watching new series, meeting friends, playing, and concentrate on improving skills.

But half the time I hope to get some kind of job which I enjoy - maybe work at a guitar shop. In that sense I don't look forward to the 3 month break. I've been through this, it can be ridiculously empty in these three months. I fear emptiness and it sure looks like large pockets of time in the 3 months will be relatively empty. 

Went jamming with Desley's band on Friday - a bit of a 'oh gosh no friggin way' moment when one of his bandmates plugged in my guitar and there was no sound. With the soldering tools in bad condition and it's all in hall anyways, I couldn't afford to have to spend a day to solder everything again. Thankfully it's just a loose tone knob which kind of jerked the wire a little loose. I.e. it's okay now. Some people actually theorize that I play better when I'm stoned (tired, not high) it's kind of strange.

Stranger things have happened and most of the time we don't know why, just know that they do. Been through a couple of those as well, and when you can see it replay in front of your eyes again and again and again you wonder if this time it'll just be the same so just enjoy the moments, or dread them, while they last. 

My head is relatively heavy, my neck hurts, and so does my legs. I hate exams. 

grins :D

cost me a cool 85 bucks but, money well spent

big changes

That has been transformed into this:

thats like $3 worth of duct tape and stuff from a pasar malam. I know it's hideous and that's partly the point :D

for all of you who've seen my tiny miniature room before, it now got bigger (yay) by some miracle of ikea innovations and storage spaces - this could probably be an ikea ad. oh well i forgot what i was gonna say

now back to projects and pretending to do them