End of Year 2 - Term 1

It has been a roller-coaster ride thus far...

A Hungry man is an Angry man

(Part-Time) University life is extremely tiring and I hope whomever is reading this is either...

1. A hardworking (hopefully smart) kid with good enough grades to enter Local Universities as a Full-Time student, OR
2. You have rich parents whom can sponsor you to study Full-Time, be it local or overseas

Trust me, you will not have the energy nor mentality to study once you've been out in the workforce for years ._.

Back to my story... the last few weeks of school was SHO TIRING

Chionging 3 assignments (2 Java 1 UML) within 2 weeks

This is a phase I'll definitely remember for time to come
I literally slept at 3am-5am everyday just to code my Java assignments...
Funny thing was, I DIDN'T FEEL tired *_*

My guess is that I was so pumped with adrenaline! Everything I wanted/planned to do worked out perfectly fine and was smooth-sailing (;

There was once though where I broke down though );
It was Java assignment 3, and we had no idea what to do!
To quote the lecturer: "Just go Oracle website and download the KnockKnockServer/Client"

Sounds easy? Yes and no. At the same time it was good and bad actually...

• The Good
• Due to extreme limited time constraints (only 5 days instead of original 2 weeks), we didn't have to be taught or understand how it works
• It's a working code! Just have to modify it from an extremely simple text communication to our Assignment's game
• She even told us if we couldn't get the Assignment working at all, just show the basic multi-threaded Server/Client connection (already comes with the downloaded code!) and she'll give us 50% marks
• Let's see... 50% of Assignment functionality (60%) is 30%, just for doing nothing! Lazy people just have to do some reporting and useless stuff to get 50% to pass the assignment. Awesome deal if you ask me
• The Bad
• Fine, we can breeze through the assignment and score some marks which contributes to our overall score. Then what, exams how? Die?
• We barely understand all the new functions and methodology in it! ._.

The first 3 days was awesome as usual and I could get all my ideas out into code perfectly fine... Until I hit a roadblock
I couldn't understand how to get the communication logic to start/stop/flow properly

After being stuck for >12hrs, I called Philip for advice. He kindly offered to help look at my codes after work/school @ 11pm at KH's void deck.
There, he re-wrote most of my server's code for 2hrs and when everything was finally coded...

.
. .
. . .
. . . .
. . . . .
. . . .
. . .
. .
.

IT DID NOT WORK
Philip's coding was flawed in a way that what he wanted to do couldn't be done logically. Since it was already 1am, I thanked Philip for trying even though I ended up back in Square One... and headed home in a cab feeling extremely disappointed

Immediately upon alighting the cab, that's when all the lack of sleep, stress and whatever shit kicked in...
My momentum got disrupted I guess?
I suddenly felt extremely tired and nauseous I had trouble even walking back to my house :S

Once I got back home, I immediately ran to the toilet to vomit...

And again...

And again...

Yup, I vomitted 3 times in a row.

Have you ever wondered what the Merlion is doing? I think it's vomitting

I felt so sick and deathly I just showered and slept without even attempting anymore. That was the first "break" I took in weeks, which finally enabled me to sleep more than 3 hours >_>

I solved the logic on my own eventually, shall not tell the full story here, it's too long

So anyway, the moment I handed in Java Assignment 3...
I literally felt the stress slowly seep away... the burden lifted off my shoulders... tiredness crept in minute by minute

It was as if my mind was forcing my body to hold-on until I tackled all the assignments

Talk about mind over body... I now totally believe in it @_@

Revision Week

I didn't feel the same motivation as when I was doing my assignments.
Guess I'm a hands-on person rather than a NATO (No Action Talk Only) person.

Just can't discipline myself to simply quietly sit down and read the damned notes
Always feel so distracted and sleepy ._.

For the first few days, I studied for 2hrs and watched movies/stone at Facebook for 2hrs -_-
This went on for a few days until I realized I HAVE NOT EVEN STARTED STUDYING FOR JAVA

I mugged UML from Tuesday all the way till the exam on Monday itself and deeply regretted it
THE PAPER WAS SO DAMN EASY!!
I CAN ALMOST LITERALLY SAY OUT THE LECTURE NOTES WORD FOR WORD ( of course I understand, I don't just do blind memory =3= )
YET THE PAPER CAME OUT SO... SIGH DISAPPOINTINGLY EASY

On the other hand, one of my uni mates told me that he started studying much earlier than me. Despite that, he told me this shocking thing, "Henry, we've studied Java for 4 days and I still don't quite understand it yet"

It's currently Monday and Java exam (supposedly much more difficult to study) is just 43hours away...
And I haven't even started studying a single page...

What would be the logical thing to do here?

HMM . . .

Le hmm...

When I reached home, instead of mugging Java directly... I took a 2hours nap and played a few games of DoTA with my Uni mates instead LOL

FIRST BLOOD!

Studying for Java

Almost everyday I have been drinking Large Cafe Latte from CoffeeBean and it's effect now is just warm milk. Caffeine no longer has any effect on me ._.

While compiling my own set of notes on important stuff, I realized my home printer was almost out of ink ._.
Took a cab to school library and met up with Carrie to study together. Barely managed to type+print out the basic stuff before the library closed at 9pm...

I then took the bus home and managed to get some shut-eye for 10min...

Continuing to study at home, even though I still feel very pumped, I took a look at myself in the mirror and saw my dreary sore eyes were bloodshot @_@


THAT'S WHEN I DID A REALITY CHECK...

Pages of Notes to study: 1184
Pages Studied: 324 - Revision notes only (27.3%)
% of Pages understood: 60~70%
% practised: 0%
Time to Exam: 12hrs
Screwed Level: I don't wanna think about it ._.

F M L

F

LIFE SUCKS

T_T

At 2am... I started to feel extremely drowsy... I made a cup of Kopi-O Gao and despite tanking it immediately, I continued to close my eyes subconsciously );

In a desperate bid, I then tried something for the first time in my life, which I've always been sceptical about... Chicken Essence!!

HOLY SHYT THIS REALLY WORKS

My notes and my... potions =3=

Whilst the Large Cafe Latte / Kopi-O Gao only served to slow down my drowsiness, Chicken Essence promptly dissipates it and keeps me awake for 1hr+ for each bottle consumed

I managed to complete a one-time read through of everything I wanted to study by 5am, and promptly went to sleep before my alarm at 6.30am wakes me up >_>

In the end I attempted the exam after barely understanding (without any time to practise too) the 324 pages only

Interestingly, after the exam, everybody I talked to were saying the same thing...
做不完啊！！！


My lecturer wasn't joking when she mentioned during a particular lecture and also the last revision that, for the entirety of the 3hr exam, you literally write from 10am - 1pm, NON-STOP.

My answer booklet has 24pages, 12 for rough writing and 12 for answers.
I asked for an additional booklet at 12.30pm and in total... I wrote 18 pages of code for this exam -_-

I skipped a 5 marks question while I heard others skipped as much as 20+
And despite skipping that 5 marks question, I wrote till 12.58pm...
The 2 minutes was used to write my name / course and etc details

Why is that important? If you are not able to hand in your answer by the time the invigilator comes to your desk, YOU CANNOT HAND IN AFTER THAT

WHICH MEANS YOU FAIL

WTF?!!?

die0r

Like a Ninja!

Did I mention before?

During my National Service Days in Pulau Tekong... I was from "Ninja" Company?

Duty! Honour! Country! Ninja Company!

Last month when I had my haircut, I did a Ninja move =3=

I requested to my Stylist for a wash after the haircut, because I was going out for Mahjong after that ( I got put aeroplane thou >_> )

Didn't want the tiny bits of hair sticking on my face, ear, nose, neck and t-shirt ( it looks horrendous when I walk home with that )

After the haircut, he got his lackey ( trainee ) to do a simple wash for me.

When I got back to my seat, and as he whipped out the hair dryer... he whipped my complimentary glass of ice water in the process ._.

I could see the glass slowly tilting

From upright standstill to 45 degrees

Ice cubes and water slowly spilling out towards me

The lackey gasping with a wide :O

There was 2 choices, and I only had a fraction of a second to decide...

• Save the glass
• Avoid the water

With the dexterity and reflex of a Ninja, I saved the glass from its shattering doom ^__^

AND I got drenched in the process -_-"

My berms and lower part of my t-shirt was totally wet!

The lackey was so shocked he fumbled and stuttered, and tried to dab my berms with a few pieces of tissues. As if that would help -_-"

I brushed his hand off as he got... erm... uncomfortably close...

At this juncture, I could hear a sorry from him almost every 2-3seconds... Poor guy, he must've been so worried he'll get a scolding from his bosses or smth

He then tried to use the hair dryer to dry my berms. Again I told him to stop, because...

1. DOOD.... Are you trying to cook my manhood?
2. It won't work, not if he tried for at least 30min or more

I know for sure about (2) because I had a similiar incident back in 2004 when I first started working in Acacia Call Center for HP.

It was one of those sleepy mornings... I went downstairs to L4 canteen to tarpao my kopi-O.
When I came back up and put the drink packet into my tempo cup, I was already exhausted LOL

Groggily, I accidentally hit my cup that held my kopi-O packet and it spilled all over my pants.

THANK GOODNESS WORKING PEOPLE WEAR BLACK PANTS (well, most of us)

I hurriedly went down to the rarely occupied male toilet at the Car Park at level 3.

There I took off my shoes n pants, and started to wash le pants with the hand soap in the basin

It took me a good 10mins before I finally stopped seeing kopi-O coming off my pants when I wringed them dry...

I started to use the hand dryer to dry it, but OMGLAH it got so hot after awhile that even when putting my hand near it to activate it nearly scalded me!

All the while when I was washing my pants, I kept praying... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NOBODY COME IN PLEASE

CAN YOU IMAGINE IF YOU ENTERED A TOILET, THIS DUDE IS IN HIS UNDERWEAR AND SOCKS, AND TRYING TO DRY HIS PANTS UNDER A HAND DRYER?

That's also the reason why I chose to wear my kopi-o underwear rather than take it out to wash also >_>

So anyway, it tried this hand dryer thing for almost 1hr before I wore it. It felt... wet and warm... very weird feeling.

That brings me to the point, you wanna use hairdryer to dry my berms?

NO THANKS!