The Second Day

I have been sleeping in a non-air-conditioned room for days now in response to Earth Hour. I believe the sacrifices I have made so far and would be making in the future would be able to help heal the world. The truth is, my beloved air-conditioner broke down and no one’s calling the repair man. So, I was stuck to using the ceiling fan and a stand fan, which are both switched on to a fan speed of 3.

This morning, I woke up to a cloudy morning. I felt like falling back to sleep but my 8 o’clock class prevented me from doing so. Which I later grudgingly get out of bed. As I walked down the street, I smelt a scent of gloominess.

Indeed. Arriving at college, the faces I encountered weren’t of any bit chirpy. Maybe it’s the upcoming finals that’s giving everyone so much pressure. I bet all ADP students would agree with me that the course assessments are inhuman. A-levels, B-Psych students always get a week or two off before finals as their study breaks.

ADP students on the other hand, not only do not have study breaks but we are often tortured with extra assignments, quizzes and presentations right before our finals. Those “obstacles” came at the right moment that it’s as though the lecturers did that on purpose to keep us preoccupied so that there wouldn’t be any time spared for us to prepare for our finals. Which means, they want us to fail our papers.

It has been hours since I started waiting. I have always told myself that waiting is a bliss in disguise. It truly is when you think of it from a different perspective. I loitered about after my class, which ended shortly before 10. Had lunch with my sister and played cards with my friends. Tinesh even founded some interesting rule for the Big2.5 game. Awesome.

It was drizzling and I hate it when it drizzles. Those annoying little rain drops just keep falling on my head! Why don’t You just pour it all down at one go? I stared at a puddle of water and watched every single rain drop as they fell. I was waiting yet again. The rain wouldn’t stop then, as though it was trying to wash my hope and faith away. But I persevered.

1 and a half hour later, my dad finally arrived.

 CONFUSED, Sean

 

******

It says: “You are a sensitive individual and enjoy the closeness of a romantic relationship. Although you would prefer not to be apart, you have the sensibility and strength of will to survive a long-distance romance until the time came that you could live in the same city.” – Could You Survive A Long-Distance Love Affair?

The Urge

This is called 50 FIRST REACTIONS. Type what comes to your mind first whenever you see those 50 words below. Don't think and don't go back and change. Doesn't matter how random it would be, just type it! Re-post it for all your friends.

1. Beer: Bitter.
2. Food: I can never have enough.
3. Relationships: Lovely.
4. Crush: Cute!
5. Power Rangers: Lame.
6. Life: Can be interesting if you live it that way.
7. The President: has Ninja skills! *swatting a fly during an interview*
8. Yummy: Ice-Creamssss!
9. Car: Lamborghini
   
10. Movie: Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen
11. Halloween: Pumpkins and scary people?
12. Religion: Faith.
13. Hate: Insects!
14. Fear: MORE insects!
15. Marriage: Eternal.
16. Blondes: Some look pretty.
17. Slippers: Not for walking.
18. Shoes: For walking?
19. Asians: Smarter than Caucasians.
20. Past time: Grey's Anatomy!
21. One Night Stand: Not my style.
22. My cell phone: Perfect on the outside, rotting from the inside.
23. Smoke: Bad for health.
24. Fantasy: Never real.
25. College: Relaxing if there're no assignments and quizzes.
26. High School Life: Gossips and Scandals.
27. Pajamas: I wear them.
28. Stars: Bright and shiny.
29. Center: Balance up everything.
30. Alcohol: Never taste good.
31. The word LOVE: Not as simple as it seems to be.
32. Friends: Forever.
33. Money: People would fight to have them.
34. Heartache: I get it every time.
35. Time: Passing by swiftly.
36. Divorce: Should not happen.
37. Dogs: Are fun to play with.
38. Undies: I wear them all the time.
39. Parents: Complete a family.
40. Babies: Adorable!
41. Ex: None!
42. Song: Fills my world.
43. Color: Liven up the world.
44. Weddings: Once in a lifetime.
45. Pizza: Delicious.
46. Hangout: I crave for.
47. Rest: 8 hours a day.
48. Goal: Hard to keep.
49. Inspiration: Must have for poetic writings.
50. Dream: Tells us our inner desires.
    

Tag:
Chloe, Edwin, Rina, Sheryl, Calv.

Seriously..

..Seriously, seriously. It has been 12 hours now since I started thinking of it. And I have not figured anything out, things are still left un-sorted! I've been literally foraging everywhere for some leftover "breadcrumbs" but I found none! Actually I did found some, but it's so minute in size that I doubted it's related to what I'm searching for.

This morning, I woke up feeling groggy. Maybe it's because of the stress that was flung onto me the night before. When I was preparing for college, those issues couldn't stop bothering me. While all that was happening, I was trying to get my emotions right because I think they are rather irrelevant and out of place.

Suddenly, all that excitement I have been feeling lately, faded, just like pink mist - One shot in the head and you got it all. A few minutes passed. Staring into the screen, I contemplate my fate, or maybe I am trying to, as I solidify my thoughts. By now, I should be hiding at one corner of this room and start weeping? Or should I be grimacing as I walk around college?

Ironically, I did none of it. It's normal that people don't usually project their inner thoughts/emotions on their faces, but I usually do, somehow. So it's rather abnormal for me to not show it today, but at least I'm putting up some hints, which I should not be doing? Weird.

If I were to continue with this unnecessary ranting, I might stand a chance to bore you to death. Or baffle you into billion bits and pieces. Then I would be charged under whatever section that is for committing crimes I did not actually commit. So, I think I shall put a halt to this now before things get any worse.

Cheers! =)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Banner

make your own here

Dear Nuffnangers

The invention of sophisticated electronic gadgets, especially the technology-wonder mobile notebook/portable desktop, and the advent of WiFi and now WiMax, have never made blogging any easier. Anybody, regardless of age, gender, race, or ethnicity, could tramp across the globe with a notebook in their hands, and they would be able to blog about anything they wish to without having much difficulty.

The availability of sites such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com, have allowed people to simply create a blogging website within seconds. On top of that, Blogger websites have showed progressive improvement in their blogging systems that it had simplified the process of publishing posts into just a few clicks away. With blogging made efficient and easy, it’s no wonder that the number of bloggers have been increasing incessantly year after year.

Few years back, Timothy Tiah was just a student of University College London who dreamt of working in investment banks because it was supposed to be a lucrative and over-paying vocation. Now, standing before us is the co-founder of Nuffnang, which is Asia Pacific’s first blog advertising community.

After a brief but intense introduction by hosts of the event, Tiah started off by first introducing himself. I was rather shocked to find out that he was a former student of HELP. It has been 2 years Tiah gave talks to people of the business sector or in conference but never has he given talks to students. This gave us HELP students, privileges to attend his talk, which I found it amusing and mind-blowing.

Sharing his life experiences enthusiastically with us, Tiah lessen the looming intensity in the room as he cracked some jokes. Which soon, turned the stranger-like environment into a rather friendly one.

As the presentation moved on, Tiah enlightened us on the inspiration and idea behind the famously known Nuffnang. It all started with Timothy himself having a guest book online. He later embraced blogging into his life. Tiah’s first blog was shared with a friend where the both of them would blog about jokes to make each other laugh. It was the gradual increase of traffic to his blog that aided Tiah in finding out that blogs also do share similar potentials as other mass media in advertising merchandises and events.  

Tiah was in his final years of university when the idea struck him. He consulted his friend as the they both worked out the pros and cons of starting a business like that. As for the name “Nuffnang,” they didn’t really had a brain-storming session on it. Tiah wanted to call it “Pixels” at first, which was quite brilliant of him because advertisements in Malaysia were measured in pixels. However, his friend begged to differ, thought otherwise and gave Timothy 3 reasonable reasons as to why they should call it “Nuffnang” instead. The discussion culminated with Tiah giving in. So, “Nuffnang” it is.

Tiah was proud that he made a wise decision back then to put his investment in the “Nuffnang” business and not on his education for the Masters. Although he specified that the success of “Nuffnang” was only 30% effort and 70% luck, I doubted it. Being the first to step foot on the blog advertising community wasn’t any easy at all. Determination, perseverance, and hard work were very much needed than luck to put things into place, because you won’t have any reference to refer to and you would have to face an uncertain risk of failure. Of course, cooperation was also one of the factors that granted success its pathway.

I couldn’t stop feeling flabbergasted as Tiah explained to us his road to success.

Then came Q & A session. When asked whether or not it is okay to take blogging as a full-time job, Timothy Tiah warned us strictly that it would be safer to take up another job and not to rely solely on blogging as the source of income. According to Timothy, we would never know how long this trend of blogging would last. Take Frienster for example, which used to be the hottest website where teenagers like us hang out online, unfortunately, Friendster is now being replaced by Facebook and Twitter. Hence, you might be earning bucks from blogs today, but who knows, blogging craze might just die out tomorrow and that would cut you completely off your income source.

To wrap up this post, we shouldn’t blog just for the money or the traffic we would get in return. However, we should treat them as an added bonus and blog for ourselves, to express our thoughts. As that would make blogging all the more exciting and fun!

Zero to Hero or Is It Hero to Zero?

It was almost 2 in the morning but you decided to read an article about “How The World Sleeps” before you hit the hay sack. The ticking of the cuckoo clock echoed around the house and it sounded extra evident as it refracted through the cooler and denser air of the night. As you lay back comfortably on the sofa in the upper floor, the ceiling fan above worked its mechanism away as it cooled you down.

By then, the house was very much consumed in grave silence as everyone had long gone to bed, burying themselves under thick comforters that gave them warmth in the air-conditioned room of theirs. Nothing could you hear but the squeaking sound of the ceiling fan and the ticking of the clocks that filled the faces of the walls in your living room. 

Moments later, you were so caught up in the facts presented in the article that all the sounds you previously heard had drown out. It was as though the sounds had hit a cycle that’s beyond the hearing range of human, which is 20,000 hertz.

All day long, you had been on a movie marathon and obviously, there wasn’t any time spared for a short siesta. On top of that, you had embraced a strenuous exercising program recently that you had relinquished 2 years ago, plus you have been sleeping at late hours since the beginning of the Summer semester. That accounted for the indescribable lethargy you were feeling. Your muscles were aching as though an army of hungry termites was feeding viciously on it.

Halfway through the article, you began to feel a little drowsy as the words sank in. Determined, you shook your head vigorously to stay awake for another minute in order to finish up the article. Just then, you paused upon hearing a familiar buzzing sound. You looked around but nothing came into sight. “Damn it!” you thought. That bug not only invaded your space, but it took control of your concentration.

Out of a sudden, the buzzing sound started once again. Louder this time, which means it’s flying close. It came into contact with your feet and you flinched. You shifted your concentration towards the floor immediately but all you could see was a flying thing that disappeared into the hanging towels in front of you. Frustrated. You could not identify the bug as it intelligently used the wooden-tiled ground as camouflage.

You knew it had not landed as the buzz indicated. You tried hard so as not to be distracted by it and continued your reading. “Was it doing it with intentions?”  you wondered, after you were attacked for the second time. *Changing “you” to “I.” * I sat up and asked myself, “What the f*** was that?”

*******************

Creepy bugs I hate. If you think that as a guy, I shouldn’t be afraid of small bugs, think again. Bugs are so minute in their sizes that you wouldn’t know what are they going to do next. I bet most of the time, you have to take a closer look to identify the bug.

Seriously, there’s nothing heroic about not being afraid of bugs. If you are just so afraid to admit to girls that bugs scare the hell out of you, then you are just plain dumb. Let me give you examples.

Let’s say you and a girl are having an evening walk in a park near your house. The girl saw an insy-winsy spider hanging down from a tree, she screams and runs away. You acting heroic, told her it’s only a small insect and the next thing you know, it bites you and you are poisoned because the spider is no ordinary spider and is poisonous. Hero to Zero.

Another example. The girl saw a bee, she screams and runs away. You acting heroic again, told her it’s just a small bee. The next thing you know, the bee stings you in the neck that gotten you a swollen neck for the next one month or more. Hero to Zero.

3rd example. While eating with the girl, there’s a fly flying around that scares the hell out of her. She screams again and you acting heroic again, told her it’s only a small fly. The next thing you know, the fly just flies into your ear and comfortably breeds its eggs. After a week, all the eggs hatch and worms start to crawl out of your ear. How disgusting is that? Hero to Zero.

So guys, don’t act stupid. Don’t give up safety for dignity. Agree or not? Leave a comment. =)

A Comprehensible Affection

 

Goes perfectly with Declan Galbraith’s Twinkle Little Star. =)

I’m right here while you are there,

Nothing could I do but to stare.

This loneliness I couldn’t forever bear,

As everyday seems like a creepy nightmare.

When you fall into silent despair,

I was worried sick for you I swear,

Feeling hurt as apart your heart tear,

Because for you very much I care.

But never once you want to share,

As you hide it all up the wooden stairs.

Desperate to help but ask I wouldn’t dare,

As it might upset you more that I scare.

Your heart, when would you bare?

All I hope for is a smile that’s fair.

Could that be possible If I bring you up in the air?

Or should I just sit still on a chair,

Pray silently for all would eventually be under you care?

The moments you have problems I wish to be rare,

And happiness I hope could be bought by millionaire.

But all I could do now is to stop and stare,

Hoping that comfort would be brought about by my teddy bear.

Angels In The Making

A gloomy Friday it was after the sun vanished below the horizon. A day without college flashed pass me. I went through my daily routine and sat still in front of the computer. I was stoning so much that I actually made Statue of Liberty seem more lively than me. As I stared blankly at the brightly lit monitor, my mind wandered off into a world of fantasy, hoping that no one and nothing would bring me back into the arid reality.

As darkness loomed over the blue void above, boredom piled up higher on my shoulders. Just as I was about to be flatten into an edible piece of human pancake, a briefly planned outing acted as a forklift, lifting up the unbearable weight off my shoulders. Although it was a last-minute plan, but all of us unanimously agreed to it. I believe 3 of us best friends were looking forward to the Saturday outing as we have not seen each other for over a month or more.

After meeting Michelle up at Kelana Jaya Lrt station, we walked to the other side of the highway via the pedestrian bridge for a free shuttle service to The Curve. We were so caught up in our interesting life stories that the bus arrived at the bus stand after waiting for what it felt like merely a few seconds. Because we have so much catching up to do, the supposedly 10-15 minutes bus ride was tremendously curtailed. Besides story telling, we managed to spare some time for picture-taking while the bus “galloped” away on the uneven tar road.

We decided to hit the cinema that day, which is the 3rd day of the release of Terminator Salvation, so off we went to CineLeisure to get ourselves 3 tickets. It was almost noon then, which explains why the queue wasn’t long. We gallivanted about a little while we were heading to TESCO for some pizzas before the 2 o’clock movie. Guess what I did? I was trying out shades and aviators, which I have no interest in purchasing any of it at all.

At Pizza Hut, the service was a 1 out of 10 rating. Michelle suggested that we wait at the entrance for the waiters and waitresses to attend to us. However, I realized that we just made a huge mistake by waiting when no one actually came to our service. There weren’t many diners during that hour and some waiters/waitresses were literally standing there, not doing anything at all. All flared up, Michelle stomped into the restaurant, pulled out a chair and sat down. We followed.

All was well moments later until it was my turn to get real pissed. After we were done with our food, I waved at a waiter who was walking towards me while I asked for the bill. He just turned away and ignored the hell out of me! What an attitude!

Chuan Chuen and I went for some Foos-balling before the movie started. Haven’t been playing it for more than a year now and my moves were a little rusty. Oh well, as long as I could get the ball into the “goal,” right?

The first hour of Terminator Salvation was plain involved and down-right complex. I was trying so hard to recall the 3 previous Terminator movies so that I could relate it to this one but failed. Michelle was laughing at its complexity and I could only give her shrugs when she asked what’s happening. I just couldn’t figure out who Marcus Wright was and the whole scene where he got flung to the river below and survived the few violent flips on the water just seemed so illogical and impossible. Until later when he turned out to be semi-robotic that it accounted for all the doubts I had earlier on. Overall, the movie was okay with some exciting and boring moments. And at some scenes, it felt like I was watching Transformers because of the sophisticated robots. On a random note, I love Moto-Terminator the most. They were real cool!

We played a game of pool after the 2 hours movie before heading to Fitness First, or was it True Fitness?

Our master here wants his 3 months holiday to be put into good use by hitting the gym to increase his muscle mass and tone his muscles up. He really needed it because he’s severely underweight! He look so emaciated but you’ll be surprise by his enormous appetite.

I couldn’t believe that I soon found my tummy drumming away when we just had our lunch 4 hours ago. Seeing that we unfortunately missed the bus, we headed right up to IKEA for some ice-cream and curry puffs. Those curry puffs were so yummy that I was tempted to get myself more, but didn’t in the end. We camwhored a little but gave up after a few shots because none of us were good at it.

Then we met this cute little African kid but non-Child-Lover Michelle thought that he wasn’t adorable at the slightest bit. She ended up playing with him and acted like the mother of that child when she gently took out tissues from her handbag and started wiping the overflowed ice-cream on his hand. As clumsy as a child would be, ice-cream was all over his mouth as he merrily licked away. Since he had dark skin, the ice-cream around his lips was extra evident. A hilarious sight it was.

Nothing but cute-ness.

There goes a day. Here’s a 3 minutes video captured by me of the moments Michelle had with that African kid. Enjoy~

Taylor Swift or Jon Schmidt

I somehow find some of Taylor Swift’s songs repulsive and I couldn’t seem to be able to figure out the justifications for it. Maybe part of it was due to my sister’s previous addiction for her songs, especially “Teardrops on My Guitar.” She would repeat it over and over again, hum and sing the song with or without the earphones plugged into her ears. You wouldn’t want to have a first-hand experience on that because it’s far more worse than just “Drag me to Hell!” It’s more of “Drag me to the Lowest Level of Hell – FINALE (Burn and Die and never come back up kinda thing)!”

Taylor Swift became more of a disaster than a singer to me. Whenever her songs were being aired, I would definitely reach for the buttons or knobs. Yes, she turned me right off!

So this day, my sister beseeched me to download a video from Youtube. Previously, I told her my computer could download videos from that site because of the Download Helper I installed in my notebook. I agreed to give her a helping hand until I saw what she was planning to do, my mind blasted off to a 180 degrees change! The title says, “Love Story (Taylor Swift)!” I was wondering, why on earth does she want to download the video when I don’t see any necessities to it? It just peeved me because I’ve heard enough of that song already!

Well, I re-considered helping after she told me this one would be way different from the MV of Love Story. Indeed! The whole video, I must admit, was mind-blowing! Jon Schmidt was so awesome that my entire anatomy was tingling with excitement and I had Goosebumps all over my hands throughout the 8 minutes video! It was just so overwhelming! Just listen to it if you are a music-lover! No regrets!

A Token Of Appreciation

Before I start on my life “dissertation,” I would like to first apologize for the short hiatus. I had only stopped blogging for 4 days and many were bugging me for updates! From Nuffnang, I found out that regular readers start turning their shoulders on me when I went inactive for only a few days. It’s actually hard to maintain a certain traffic to your blog unless you are a truly insane blogger-holic, just as what Edwin was few months ago. I’ll try to update as often as possible but no guarantees are to be made here.

What’s the occasion for the hiatus? I was so desperate to blog about my Saturday outing a few days ago but the tremendous fatigue I was suffering from, hampered my desire. And at that moment, it was almost reaching the end of the month. Seeing that I already have 20 posts for May itself, I decided to save this post for JUNE! =) On top of that, I was also busy preparing for the first Linear Algebra quiz of the Summer semester, which was held today. In short, the hiatus was actually intended.

**********************

Last night, I had this pre-conceived notion that this day would be a fine one. 5 hours before the breaking of dawn, I received an unpredictable message from a friend. It really made my day. The message says, “Yi Hui? Thanks for everything. You’ll always be my best friend whom I can tell anything and everything :)”

People make friends throughout their life. Some value friends as gold, some put friends on hold when they are out of troubles. Some make throngs of friends while others only have a few. However, I always believe that quality would always win over quantity. You might be surrounded by people of whom you suppose to be your friends, but in fact, you’ll be surprise for they might be mingling around with you for personal gains or some other reasons that are hidden from your very eyes. What you really need is true friends who are willing to share laughter and sorrow with you, accompany you through thick and thin, and  friends that could be trusted in and relied upon.

It’s undoubtedly hard to find friends like that nowadays but it’s not a totally impossible thing to do. Once you have found yourself one, please be sure that you appreciate it very well because these friendships are hard to come by.

Linear Algebra was giving me a heavy migraine while I was revising away. Just as my eyelid was starting to fail on me, I received this unexpected message that kept me wide awake for the next 3 hours. Upon reading it, I paused all the Matrix-Solving thingy and reminisced about our 3 and a half years of friendship.

I got all nostalgic thinking back the days when I first met her. It was during Form 3 when we happened to be in the same class but weren’t close, in fact, I didn’t really want to be her friend because of some *cough cough* incidents. Her “obscenity” acts with her friends, vulgarities that must not be mentioned, and her rebellious attitude were turn-offs for me. But who would have expected that we would be close friends now?

As though fate had decided upon us, we were once again in the same class for the last 2 years of our secondary schooling life. We got off the wrong foot as expected. She’s a critical person that would go all out to mark her standpoint in people’s mind, forcefully or otherwise. I, on the other hand, just loved to travel in the opposite direction and argue my way out of hers. Cold war, cold war. I actually find it fun to see her anger flaring up, while obviously that pissed her off alright. Our arguments often reached a state where the both of us were literally trembling with anger.

Judging from a positive perspective, it’s actually a good idea to have some altercations to brighten up the mundane  school life. Anyway, our friendship grew from the debates we had between us. Ahh~ How much I missed the days. I’m glad to have such friends like you too and I hope this friendship would last till forever. I’m never good at expressing my thoughts, but I know you get what I mean. =)