Purity Test

I've got a New Media final exam in 11 hours and all I can do is take this twisted test. I spent more than an hour answering the 500 questions so I thought I might as well add this here. So much for not blogging till my exams are over [I've already posted twice, so it's no big deal, right?]. Just 3 more exams to go!

Anatomy of a System

"Art is the beautiful way of doing things.
Science is the effective way of doing things.
Business is the economic way of doing things."
- Elbert Hubbard, U.S. author

Two seasons?

Two seasons? Two whole seasons of South Park? In just two days? Just two days before all the finals?

Where did my exam spirit go?

YIH Study Room sessions, the Reading Room sessions, the insane amount of caffeine in my blood, all those cup noodles to save time, my previous blog post - the promises I made to myself - what about all that?

Enough is enough. Eric, Kenny, Kyle, Stan and Chef:
Screw you guys, I'm going home. (Or a study room.)

14 steps to Nirvana

This is indeed the most challenging time of the semester. In order to keep from going round and round in circles doing the same things over and over again just to avoid work, I have decided to do the following with immediate effect:

1. Stop blogging. [A relief?]
2. Stop orkutting. [Yes, the poondi did me good after having to look at chaptiz all day, but it must be done too.]
3. Stop checking email 50 times a day.
4. Stop 'trying' to clean or organise my room.
5. Stop cooking. [Haven't cooked my food in 2 weeks and all the potatoes are growing eyes already.]
6. Stop MSN Messenger. [Can I really do it? Can I?]
7. Stop talking to people just to socialise.
8. Stop staying in my room.
9. Untune and pack my guitar and throw away the plectrums.
10. Keep a sleep diary to avoid PSS. [Perpetual Sleep Syndrome. I've been sleeping more than 10 hours a day - don't know if it's Singaporean weather or my defense mechanism against studying.]
11. Disconnect my desktop. [Fate did that for me already.]
12. Start spending time at the study areas in libraries and elsewhere.
13. STOP MAKING PLANS AND ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.
14. And oh! Start studying!

So dear well-wishers, wish me luck for my exams. Those of you who pray, please pray for my success. And those of you who also have exams coming up, stop wasting time and go study - good luck to you all. This will hopefully be my last post before the 2nd of December - the day of my last exam [count-down timer on top right here]. On second of December there's also a party in NTU, and I'll probably post after I'm back from there. Oh Nirvana! Come as you are!

@ LC NUS gathering 4th Nov'06

Headline: Ben, our dear fellow exchange student from Germany who has been very active here, is going back early December. There goes a good part of LC NUS's cultural diversity. =(

And this was the last LC gathering in NUS this semester. Lots to do and look forward to next semester. Great words of advice from our senior @ers [David explained to us how "neuro-linguistic programming" or NLP works as an approach to enhance personal development and could help us in our mugging exercises as exams come up].

After we were done with the 'official' business of the gathering, most people just hung around to socialise, until a small group [of only guys] left to watch a movie and grab a meal. Of course we stuck around to take a few pictures with beloved Benjamin Görges before we let them go.

The shillyshally business

Have you ever encountered procrastination?
And if you did, how did you deal with it?

This I asked my good friend AN, who is a number of years younger to me and taking her A level exams currently. But she's brainy and efficient, or at least I think she is.

Her advice:
Tell yourself you're going to continue procrastinating for another 5 minutes [or 10]; set the time and countdown to it. And then focus on your work, all the while reminding yourself of what life will be like after you're done with your work.

I believed it to be good advice, so I thought of the things I had to do: [1]collect material I want to present for my political science presentation on "post-feminism"; [2]create the slides for my part of another presentation I have to do on the Yellow Ribbon Project for my New Media class; [3]edit some images for my group-members in the New Media class who don't know how to use Photoshop; [4]print-out a 100 survey forms to distribute tomorrow during our @LC gathering; [5]clean my room, which means not just dusting and sweeping, but also organising all my stuff so that I can find anything I want during my exam-prep; [6]make a sleep diary, food diary and an activity log for today and the past two days; [7]and finally, connect my desktop computer and see if it works.

And then my mind began to wonder about all the OTHER things I had to do; for instance, finish five, big, fat books for my finals. Or the designing and printing of posters for the NUS Student Recruitment Drive for the AIESEC Outgoing Exchange thing. And finding a job for the December vacation - who's gonna do that!

What if the work is never-ending?

To this, AN said, "No work is never-ending; and if it is, you're at the wrong place."

Spellbound for a few minutes, I realised this is what university life is all about: never-ending work. So I did what I do best: I procrastinated some more until I ran out of excuses to avoid work and came to making this entry on my blog, which serves me yet another excuse. I guess I'll just wander in this virtual world to find someone else to speak to, until I'm fairly sleepy and I go to sleep.

"Good luck with life!" AN wished me as she signed off.

Of versatility...

PGPR - What pathetic architecture my residence has! I left the window open just one day for only two hours, went to Clementi and it started to pour heavily! I came back to find smoke coming out of my beloved desktop computer, and a smile on the electrician's face as he saw the smoke because his problem was solved - he figured out why my neighbour complained of no light. My room's floor was soaked with rain water that had poured in. Didn't the architecturers and engineers realise it rains often in Singapore? 'Em stupid idiots!

Waterlessness - How long should I wait for all plugs, sockets and circuits accompanying my computer to dry up before I can try turning it on?

Meticulousness - Having a clean room is not hard. Having everything arranged and organised meticulously is a pain! Which is why all my stuff is lying on my bed in random fashion and I am sleeping on a mat on the floor. [For me, meticulousness and clean-living complement each other; singly incomplete without both conditions being met.]

Caffeine - It's contained in every chocolate product, and all teas, coffees, and coke, pepsi, mountain dew, and even Milky Bar and Sunkist orange! Living without caffeine for four whole days is pure torture! [I am a volunteer for this caffeine study, where they ask us to caffeine-fast four days before one day of the week when they give us a controlled caffeine dose and make us do reaction-time tests and stuff.] Never knew I was so addicted to caffeine. How will I ever mug for exams?

Cold - I didn't know there was a difference between the common cold and flu, aka influenza. Apparently they're both different kinds of viruses. So if I say I have a bad cold, that's not the same as saying I have a terrible flu. I've been wrong all my life. Hell, I deserve a bad cold.

Ketchup - Singaporean fast food chains are stupid to give sachets rather than provide bottles of ketchup. Imagine the amount of ketchup left inside the hundreds and thousands of sachets thrown away everyday...

Reading - Everything outside the curriculum is interesting to read - even if that means reading through the transcript of a documentary on Google.

Versatility - The picture of my entire room on a bed! Basically, this post.