Our hoverboard

It remains nameless because we couldn't come to a compromise for like the first time in the whole year of working as a team - not like the project was full of compromises, but at least someone won outright.

I think it looks like a 'Kermit', even if it's currently being sprayed arctic-cammo. Dhruv has very unofficially christened it Marty, after Marty McFly from Back to the Future, and Mike and Charlie wanted The Hovertron 3000.

From top left, clockwise: Me, Mike, Dhruv, Charlie

Apparently I pose "like a girl". Like that's a shock.

15 minutes later...

As he approched it, treading with a heavy heart and holding on to a glimmer of hope, he picked it up. Looking it over with a sense of sadness, he gingerly flicked the switch up, hoping for a miracle.

*GASP*

A steady but weak hum penetrated the silence of the room. It had come back from the dead!

=D haha, my shaver's back! It works, omg! No more bleak caveman days ahead of me or the fear of manual razors. Sadly though, it has advanced to the third stage of 'shaver cancer'. It no longer emits a light indicating it's charging. I guess the poor thing only needed to be on life support for a lil bit longer than normal.

I'm wondering now, just whether there is another stage to go to, or the next one will be 'the one'. Come on, three more weeks left only!

It died

Today did not start out that good. My shaver has 'kaputed'. I'm goin to look like a caveman in a few days *sigh*. I'm praying that it'll miraculously come back to life. There were signs in the last few weeks that it was slowly dying. First, my cover shattered into two. Second, it no longer works without being connected to a socket. And now, the little indicator that shows that it's 'charging' is devoid of light =(

In other news, I got offers for all my Masters applications, so yay! The bad news is that I'll have to come back to London before the 4th of September to sit a one month pre-course in maths that's examined at the end of the month. All of a sudden my summer break no longer seems long enough. The last time I did maths was in uh, A-level. That's a WHOLE THREE YEARS ago!@! I'm going to have to revise my calculus and differentiation and what not. Argh.

While everyone has more or less finish their exams or are near the end of it, mine's still to come. So while everyone sorta at the peak or winding down, i'm sorta just starting to climb the hill. It kinda puts "slow" in perspective.

But hey, KL beckons in 3 weeks so hurrah =)

A flying success

We were close to tears, two of us were hung over, and this day was proving to be longer than "we'll just slap it together and have it running". Two hours turned into seven, and at about 4pm, I was all ready to go at the next person to call my idea stupid with the wire cutters.

And then it flew. It actually flew, in a rush of saw dust, an incredible amount of noise, and a whole load of exuberant screaming on my part. Our baby flew!

I'm allowed puns, a whole year of hardwork has just come into fruit. I will definitely put pictures up at some point and a clip. There will even be a clip.

A flash in the pan

How could I not comment on the final?

Arsenal's 10 made it look like 11 vs 11 until the last 15 minutes when heavy rain and fatigue made it look like 7 against 11. That and some not so awesome goalkeeping.

The plagiarism thing? I checked out at 2% +phew+ "squeaky clean" Dr. Crofton said after making us suffer collectively while he scanned it.

Otherwise the DMT report is pressing on my mind. I gotta make a move.

Moronism

After years and years of plagiarism warnings, someone messed up. The guy that has brought the entire year to a grinding halt in a fit of sheer stupidity should be shot. The entire 3rd year's literature research reports have been recalled for plagiarism scanning, something our nerves cannot handle right now.

As testimony to the stress and paranoia Flat 31 is currently experiencing, we've conducted extensive research into the available plagiarism software, and have gone so far as to find out that Imperial College are running Turnitin, which is by far and large impregnable. The free German software came up with nothing helpful, most probably because none of our reports are written in German, and I am very sure that all of our thoughts lie with the ninkumpoop, no doubt thoughts that revolve around some form of violence.


And I had a good grade on that assignment too.

Eyes on the screen

Gosh, I've been slacking quite a bit since I've handed my dissertation in. Been watching episodes of Prison Break and Grey's Anatomy for the last three days and I've gotta say that I've gone through quite a bit =p Since there's only that many episodes online, I've pretty much seen uh six episodes of the former and one season of the latter, plus an episode of Desperate Housewives and another of House M.D.

Which brings me nicely to a point where there's nothing else to watch. So... I've had to find some old stuff and lo and behold it's Thundercats. Lol. Nice short 20mins clips with that theme song you can't forget... There's even Macguyver. Too bad there's no Airwolf...

Wah it hurts

It's been two months since I did any real running around, 6 months since I held any sort of racquet, and 18 months since I last played squash.

It was awesome though. Chong Wai is amazing. He plays the game with such an incredible efficiency, completely different from the rest of us that hurtle around the court, bouncing off the walls in a flailing wheel of limbs, out of breath, and always chasing the ball.

24 hours later, we're in pain. Well most of us. Godwin admits some ache, but not the crippling, oh-no-not-more-stairs sort of pain. Lester explained it as 'muscle ache', meaning that you had to have muscle in the first place in order to experience the associated ache.

And that was only about twenty minutes.

It's okay, I have Grey's Anatomy to see me through, and DMT of course.

Grey's Anatomy

+sigh+

The Lord provided

The last paper of my 3rd year was unbelieveably doable. 16 of the 25 short answer sketches were from 2004 or 2003. I'm hoping this grade's high enough to pull up all the other papers that stunk.

Despite 4 hours of sleep the night before, the euphoria of finishing kept me going through a wonderfully rewarding cell, several games of cards, my third of a bottle of wine, and two games of progressively hilarious Guillotine.

As the seniors wrap up what could possibly be 'the last exam of their life', I'm suddenly struck by how much we owe them and even more by how much I'll miss them. There won't be anybody to go to for help on tutorials, for advice on how to go about projects, about life even, no one to watch football with, or play DoTA with. It sounds so horribly selfish but they were such amazing role models, they enjoyed their time at IC and nailed those grades without so much as a second thought and never turned you down. Next year will feel so lost.

Whatever they do go on to do though, I wish them nothing but the best things. 88 just won't be the same anymore.

Imbecilic invigilators

Statistics is always misleading and vague, especially demonstrated by the fact that the marker of that paper will be able to use my script to shore up his henhouse. I left my reinforced answer booklet on the table, the sense of mild frustration dulled by the excessive amounts of solvent abuse and insufficient sleep.

The guy sitting next to me left after the first hour of the three, and to make the most of the empty desk, the invigilators took turns in parking their bums on it, dangling their legs in the scant three feet of aisle space between their desk and mine. Handling double negative conclusions supporting numbers that I didn't exactly have the highest confidence in was made even worse by the distraction of their huffing as they hauled themselves none too gracefully onto the waist-high desk.

Furthermore, I don't understand why they give us only one answer book to start with when they know full well we'll definitely need another one and graph paper for all those compulsory questions. Then when you're trying to flag them down with utmost urgency, they take forever to respond, like they couldn't feel your eyes boring into the back of their head, before casually sauntering over in their own sweet time, which you don't have much of, only to look at you blankly while you try to indicate that you need more paper without alerting the candidate in the corner over there on the far side of the room.

Happy birthday Bryan

You grow older and older so quickly. Sometimes I still think you're that short, chubby, dimple-faced little boy then I'm presented by the harsh reality everytime I go home that I have to do my bossing around in a more upwardly direction.

Happy 16th, I love you a lot even though you can make me want to rip my hair out and run around screaming.

Postscript

I'm surprised at myself being able to write that post, especially since I've only been indulging in three main forms of communication over the last week, namely greek symbols, freaking out repetitively, and grunting.

A few days ago Weng held out his hands, his fingers forming his trademark "W" and I immediately snapped, 'Omega.' Today when Godwin popped into the kitchen to throw something away, he said, 'Hello' and I went, 'Gnrh.' At all other times it's been "Ohmygoodnessohmygoodnessohmygoodness."

Sentences = good.

In the thick of it

Weng and I are doing some simultaneous stressing. He's the most amazing last minute person I know. With his dissertation due tomorrow, he's still working on it and he has his brother proof-reading it in a different time zone all at the same time. I admit, he's fortunate to have his brother because I could not think of anyone more suited to correct it.

As for me handling exams and all. Wednesday night was sleepless because the weather's suddenly turned KL-hot and the impending doom of the fluid mechanics paper weighed heavily in my mind along with all the equations and carefully drilled proofs. All this cramming makes me feel like a dumper truck - a vehicle for facts and figures, working on holding it all in my sieve-like memory until I can hit the exam paper and release whatever's left in a mess of scribbles, tipex, and varying degrees of panic.

Fluids wasn't as bad as it could've been and certainly better than Stress Analysis and Machine System Dynamics (I think). I really hate second guessing my grade because that just sort of jinxes it.

I can't believe I have time to blog.

Statistics tomorrow. They've changed the format this year from a very charitable 'here are 8 questions, choose 5' to 'here, do all five'. I think they're just cutting printing costs. The lecturer had to produce a sample paper, which he did by taking the exam from the year before, omitting three questions, and changing the instructions on the front. I feel so unprepared.


My sister texted me instructions from my mother asking me to find out if I'm registered to vote. I was like, "Um, what me? But there's like only one party, isn't there?' I don't live in Singapore enough to have opinions about which group of school-uniform-wearing men are qualified enough to lead the country. So far they've been getting along perfectly. Besides political opinions have to be approved and cross-checked before they can be opined where I come from. Free speech? Nah, look where that got America.