Traditional Mother

Calling home was probably the worst decision on a Friday night, or I guess it's just my decision to talk about returning to grad school.

Relates to a recent article I read on Wall Street Journal.

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Murphy's Kitchen Law

Kitchen cause two of these events unfolded in the kitchen, only 15minutes apart.

I wanted to keep this bottle cause I find it peculiar and I've not seen it in the market before:

According to my cousin there isn't Starbucks in India, and this is all they have, retailed in their supermarkets. She found it retailing in a supermarket in Ampang when she returned. It was pretty OK, with the aroma still contained but it's a tad too sweet for me so I prefer a cuppa freshly brewed instead of prepack.

So just being one of my bad habit I thought of keeping the bottle, which I knowingly, cause I was too lazy to remove it from the rack where the bottle stood after washed, knocked if off, shattered it while trying to reach for something further in the rack. So much for keeping it when I only made a mess to clean. My cousin reproached by asking why was I so careless, I blamed it on the cluttered rack.

In resignation I then went on to chomp down some biscuits to quell my hunger while watching TV. For no apparent reason I lost grip of the bottle of cookies and it crashed to the floor. Another mess to clean and my cookies are gone! My cousin then chimed in: Now there's nothing in your way to cause that crash unlike that cluttered rack.

The hunger and thirst from my run only exacerbated my temper. At least my saving grace was a perfect excuse to not do the dishes for the night lest I break more stuff, and turns out it was my dad who broke the ear of a mug. LOL.

Remission

After a week of toiling, I'm going into remission. Sounds misleading with that austere tone right? I'm supposed to be happy that I finally alleviate myself of this huge load called the Final Year Project/Thesis. I'm just too tired to respond gleefully after the past nights of burning the midnight oil.

All I'm thinking of now, is to reward myself with a well deserved meal despite skipping swimming today after a long session with my supervisor. This is really letting my hair down (though I have none to be let) due to it's non conformity with my exercise-food intake ratio.

Garrgh. I'm supposed to be jovial rather than austere. Entertainer for hire, anyone? And ANY form of entertainment.

Trust Your Gut Instinct

Industrial Automation and Control Systems lab is 9am to 11am today, but it was de facto 9am to 12.15pm, lunch break then 1.30pm to 3.30pm. The staggering long hours? Here's why.

This was the given connection diagram for a closed loop control system:

My first time in 3.5 years of study, I'm seeing a T circuit. Cool. So how to connect physically? I interpreted it as such:

"Hmm, I'm not too sure myself, but do this:" was the response of the teaching assistant

Then I replied: "Huh? Doesn't this means that the Controller, Reader and the Resistance unit are all in parallel, like this:"

Teaching assistant: "Not too sure, just connect the T circuit first, then jump the terminals to the Resistance unit."

Hooked everything up, assuming that the black box Resistance unit has some special connection hidden. Double, triple, quadruple checked, swapped terminals, still not functioning. Fiddled, meddled with the Controller not working still. Swapped controller unit, futile. This experiment seemed forlorn we almost relented.

Just when all hope was gone, the TA showed us a circuit diagram from his manual, or his previous lab report saying the connection should be like this. We then realized something was not right. The resistor was blardy in series with the power supply and temperature transmitter while in parallel with the Controller and Reader, which was this:

This is an epitome of how something simple turned complex. Next time, I shall learn to trust my instinct and bother to try it out instead of taking others' words for granted.

Back to 'School'

Yeah. We are young adults still being treated as kids in this 'school' called Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. Returned for my final semester to find the internet fettered, just like China. Talk about freedom of information, speech and globalization. All google related sites and tools are blocked, yes which includes gmail which is totally unacceptable considering how indispensable google is.

Now there’s some way to bypass proxy which given us freedom, which eventually reflects on the point that the more a society or individual is restricted the more they would rebel and find loopholes to sneak through, just like religion too.

On a lighter note I was impressed with Tesco’s song selection. They actually played an Italian song which I like while I was doing groceries there. Got over-hyped I had to message Bha Eeo about it when she mentioned Kee Hui might have been the DJ.

Wasn’t only me who got hyped over something. Bha Eeo is the other who is raving about her discovery of Freemason temple in Ipoh and Penang to the extent she said this:

"mcb lee tze yang

there's a building in penang i always passby

also a masonic temple!"

Not forgetting also folks who like to perpetually sai meng. One keeps saying how jealous he is cause we get to come back to uni while another keeps saying how ‘unfortunate’ he’s not in EE so he does not have so many lectures.

Final semester has been the time most of us have been waiting earnestly for, but now that it’s here, I know I will miss how we will be able to gather frequently to hang out. I was conspiring with a few other friends to flout a few laws before we graduate:

1. To drive from Pocket D end all the way to Chancellor’s Complex in a convoy.

2. Camp in the IRC and remain unnoticed even on the next day.

Looking forward to the hiking (more trekking like) trip this coming Saturday with Dean and his buddies, while Bha Eeo despite so much coaxing chose mee suah over us it, allegedly also claiming she doesn’t wanna abandon her darling roomie.

Pool

My brother and I decided to go for a swim in Shah Alam but to find the pool closed to our chagrin upon arrival. Oh well, I'm still too pumped from Vietnam to fret about it.

Another pool related thing which totally slipped my mind was this awesome concept introduced by Aiting called, well, the Pool. It's a collection of ante put in by all members of the group. Payment related to shared items like food, accommodation and transportation will then be made from it. Saves the hassle of producing loose change and money handling too. Kudos to Aiting the treasurer.