Tag Archive for 'nus'

Rain Rain Go Away!

Published on March 13, 2008 in Ramblings and School. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

So, I biked home in the rain once again. It wasn’t raining at NUS and so I decided to carry on. Then there was little droplets of water and I proceeded thinking that it was nothing. Then it got bigger and by the time I was near home it was raining cats and dogs and I was drenched! Even then, I decided not to stop and put on my raincoat since I was so near… So near but yet so far… The rain felt like a million needles poking you, and it also felt like I was swimming in the antarticas. Oh well, at least I’m safe and dry and warm in the comfort of my room now. Ok, not quite warm since my new fan seems to be super powerful, even though I set it to the slowest speed.

Anyway, being the Economist that I am, I realise that people really do respond to incentives. Like duh! And sleep is one of the strongest motivators out there. I went to school early for lessons @ 9am. I was supposed to have lessons until 6, and then a project meeting at 630pm. However, the project meeting got cancelled, and so I was supposed to end at 6. Then I thought to myself, the tutorial at 5 to 6 can be skipped and I can go home at 4 to sleep since I have a break from 4 to 5. Further into my lessons I thought that the programming lab too could be skipped since I did not have much to do at the lab anyways so I could go home at 2! By the end of the lesson, I decided not to go for the Statistics lecture since the lecturer would put me to sleep anyway.  So here I am, through the rain and at home @ 12! For a day that was supposed to end at 7+ and which ended @ 12 I think that is really good!

On a side note, I got 34/40 for my Econs Mid Term MCQ test, so I guess last minute studying really does pay off!

Playing around with color accent

Published on February 25, 2008 in General, Photos and School. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

So, I wouldn’t say I’m the most proficient in using my camera, but I found one function of it which I really like! It’s the “color accent” function, which basically makes your photo black, white and another colour of your choice! So, here are some shorts of colour accented photos I took!

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On a side note, it’s the recess week of NUS today! I asked my mini boss whether she wanted me to go in for work more days this week, but apparently the medium boss thinks there’s no need for it, so here I am slacking my time away at home. I actually have a few projects and stuffs to do, but I’m too lazy to even touch them! Maybe I will start on them later. Or maybe not :P

I Love NUS!

Published on January 17, 2008 in General, Ramblings and School. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Gotta love NUS, for screwing me up over and over again. First it was CORS, but that was nothing. Now it’s the school administration, or the school of computing, or whoever makes decisions that tutorial slots can be changed at their whim or fancy. Yes, they decided to change the tutorial slots available for bidding of one of the modules to some other days. The worse thing was that I didn’t know about it until I decided to browse through the module info page to see my planned slot GONE. And the worser thing was that the only 2 days they had tutorials on were my working days. And the worsest thing was that I had to bid for another module at Round 3B (2nd last round of bidding). And the worserest thing was that I used up ALL my points for a module I could have probably gotten for less than 100 points in earlier rounds. Yes, all 4388 of my points, which leaves me with exactly… 0 points left in my programme account. Oh well, at least I take comfort in the fact that going to school for my Statistics lecture is a good cure for insomnia…

Anyway, I had my wisdom tooth extracted yesterday. All the horror stories I have heard, about the pain and the amount of money you need to spend. Well, I can say that my experience wasn’t that bad. Only paid $77, and the extraction took all of 10 minutes. So, I went to the dentist at around 4:20pm. Sat on the dental chair, and let the dentist do some routine checking. After she checked, she injected me with 2 injections of anaesthetic, and waited for around 5 minutes. After that, she said she would test first, and before I knew it my wisdom tooth was out. I guess I’m one of the luckier ones who don’t have wisdom teeth that grow at odd angles and where you need to cut your gem to get the tooth out.

Also, had my 9 to 6 marathon in school today. Would have had only 1 hour of break at 4pm, but my lab sessions have not started so I had 3 hours of break. Therefore, I went to the computer lab to do some surfing and chatting, and customizing my PortableApps FireFox. PortableApps is a cool idea which lets you install applications on your usb drive which you can bring to different computers to use. But I digress. I was spending most of my time reading http://419eater.com/, which is a site which does scambaiting. Basically it is about how they scam people, mostly those Princes from Nigeria, who send you emails that they want to give you 1 million. So it’s like giving them a taste of their own medicine. Anyway, on my way home, I saw something funny. Something was walking on the expressway pushing his bike in the opposite direction. He was probably pushing it to the exit before, possibly because no one told him that ERP changed and there was a gantry before the Upper Serangoon exit on CTE.

How to make yourself worried for nothing

Published on January 9, 2008 in School. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Today is the great CORS bidding day of Round 2A. Basically, CORS is the bidding system for NUS (my university) for us to get our modules allocated to us. Anyway, no need for the great background history of CORS, but straight to the point. I was bidding for 2 modules today, and the round ends at 5pm. So at around 445pm, I checked and saw that a module with 350 vacancies had 400+ bidders, and another module with 50 vacancies had 30+ bidders. So, naturally, I wanted to lower the bid for the latter module and increase my bid for the first one. My 1st module had 1000 points and my 2nd module had 307 points at the start. And here’s what followed:

* withdraws bid of 307 points from the 2nd module, since stupid CORS won’t let you lower the bid, but only lets you withdraw and bid again

* system slows to a crawl, and dies on me

* logs in to CORS again, and see that my bid point for 2nd module is 0, but my points left is 0 too

* panic starts to set in

* logs in again to see if problem will be rectified

* sees a message that the bid round has ended, checks clock and handphone to see that the time is only 450pm

* GREATER panic sets in

* dials CORS helpline to ask them what is going on

me: Hi, the CORS website says that the bid round has ended, but it’s not 5pm yet.

CORS helpdesk girl: The system was experiencing some problems earlier on, but it should be rectified now.

* logs in again, and sees that the round time has not ended, but remaining points left is still 0

me: I tried withdrawing a bid earlier, to increase the bid of another module, but my points seem to have been eaten up by the system

CORS girl: Please give me your details…

me: (details given)

CORS girl: Ok I’ll help you get your points refunded, but I don’t think I can do it before 5pm.

me: So there’s nothing I can do? I have 1 module with 1000 points and my other module has 0 points left.

CORS girl: Maybe you can try bidding for it in another round?

me: Should I withdraw the other module, to have points to bid for my 2nd module? I’m scared my points will be eaten up again, and I will have 0 points left with no modules.

CORS girl: The system should be rectified now, so you should get your points if you withdraw now.

me: Ok… Thanks for your help.

* abit angry with the system for eating up my points

* withdraws 1000 points from 1st module to bid 900 points to the 1st module and 100 points to the 2nd module

So, at the end of the round, I went from 1000 points and 307 points to the modules to 900 points and 100 points to the module. So much for trying to increase my chances of getting the modules. I know the CORS girl couldn’t do much, since she probably wasn’t in charge of the system or anything, but I was kinda angry that I had less points at the end of it and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, that was not the end of it all, in a good sense that is.

* Receives call at 515pm from CORS girl

CORS girl: Hi, we know the round has ended, but since you were affected by the problem with the system, we decide to help you change your bid accordingly. We see that you’ve bidded 100 points for your 2nd module, so…

me: (gives details on changes to be made)

me: Thanks for your help.

So in the end, I did indeed get my bid of 1207 and 100 points for the respective modules. But, alas, my worry was all for nothing anyway, and I probably would have been better off not bothering about the bids in the first place. I got my 1st module for 301 points, and my 2nd module for 1 point. So much making myself worried for nothing…

100% Done!

Published on December 8, 2007 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Yay! My exams are finally over. Just finished my last paper. It was supposed to be from 9am to 11am, but I finished it within 15 mins. Not that I was confident or anything, but it was a 40MCQ paper, and it was only 30% of the module’s marks. The MCQ choices were like “a) The statement is right. b) The statement is wrong. c) The statement is more right than wrong. d) The statement is more wrong than right”. There were other kinds of questions, but most of them had this kind of answers so I guess I didn’t really care whether I took 15 mins or 1 hour to complete it. Anyway, there is a stupid rule in NUS that you cannot leave within the first hour, so there I was sitting around waiting till 10am before I could leave. Besides, I was not the only one to leave at 10am, so it should mean that either everyone was smart, or just as lost as me. Anyway, I don’t care that much since it’s the end of my exams and I’m free!

I have so much things to do, like play games, watch my tv show episodes which have piled up over the semester. Also, I’m attending Jimmy’s birthday bbq party this evening, and work starts on Monday! Time is precious, gotta catch up with my games now :)