Well, school reopens tomorrow, Monday. You can just sense overall change in aura lately, like rushing to get last minute chores done & such, not to mention the sudden offset of school dismay & bitching you can get off your friends & classmate’s personal messages in MSN.

It’s gonna be the end of semester for those in College, with summer holidays coming at the end of the adac year. For us in Poly, the summer holidays is not very much of a holiday either, spring holidays you may say (a very much shorter one too with the early start of adac year tomorrow). For many I guess, including me, with most of our time caught up at work or at ITP attachments, theres nothing much left to enjoy. But personally its better than spending 25 hours a day in front of the computer gaming or “mapling” like what some of my friends do. & the worst thing is they couldn’t tell the difference between Far East plaza & Far East shopping center!

Well, its 5pm & the sky is so dark it just looks like twister is approaching. Would be picking mum & dad off at Tiong Bahru Plaza after their “Eight Below” movie (& man have I not driven in like months!). Then it will be off again so some special buffet surprise location for dinner, which mum always never cease to always amaze us with.

Next semester, new class new faces again. But this time this will be my class for the next 2 years, so dun play play! Must go through ice-breakers again, not to mention making good impressions I guess, cos this is the class group which will ultimately determine whether you enjoy or suffer the rest of poly years. Why a new class so soon? well as I already did my option at the end of year one DME (contray to the usual at year 2), now I am in DME – CIE (Creatively Innovation & Enterprise) Option, so you can very much call us “Design Engineers”.

Sad to see the parting of my previous class, haha I love that class, 25. But it seems that personal wants outweigh class-hood – with many transferring to DMA (aeronautical engineering) courses because of perceived prestige & higher pay prospects I believe, or maybe just because they made the requirement & were invited over after the result release. DMA is one of the toughest courses to enter, requiring at least 12- 14pts at ‘O’ Levels. Ultimately I believe in not following the crowd, I mean heck I could enter DMA or any course in SP if I wanted at enrollment, but I will just stick to my guns in this current “dumping ground course” & do what I like to do – The CIE option.

Class starts at 9am for me tomorrow lasting all the way to 5pm with only an hour’s lunch break in between. It will be another challenging semester, my tabletime had never been so packed before, going home at 5pm at almost every other day except wednesdays, (which I would be seeing myself staying till then too). I guess long & stressful year-2 stories so wisely told by my seniors are fast becoming reality now.

With CoreDuo laptops slowly making it’s way into the market, apparently some tech savy consumers like me is fad up in waiting for such new computers to hit mainstream, whether its a new laptop for my sis or a new tablet for me. In that limelight, I guess I would not wait for Fujitsu to launch the new coreduo tablets (aimed around end this year) & get the year-old Sonoma Laptops, mainly due to 4 reasons:

1) Firstly, its taking computer companies freakin’ forever to release one, 2) even if it out, it will be freakin’ expensive, (especially for tablet PCs) & moreover, 3) it will take months before it’s offered to schools at student rates, often being 4) largely scaled down models (in terms of specs) contrary to those offered to direct regular consumers.

But won’t doing so be an insult to all my research? Not to mention time spend into spotting of good hardware which can last a consumer? Personally even if that is so, the bad out weighs the good I believe. I guess when you need a laptop now, the more important thing is to get it when you need it then.

The Laptop I will be getting for Sheena will be a 2Ghz Centrino 760 Laptop with 1GB ram, DVD-RW writer & ATI X600 graphics card. Despite being 1 year old tech, its still quite a powerhouse I can say, more than sufficient to last her a long time for multimedia work, casual gaming & into the Windows Vista operating system with Aeroglass enabled. I won’t mention on the brand & price here, as it meant to be a suprise for her, so as mum wanted.

For me, I will be going for the very much slower (1.73Ghz) yet funnily, much more expensive Fujitsu T4020 tablet PC. I had been eyeing this model since last September, hoping that Fujitsu releases a successor to it, but I guess even if they do, even with different specs (Current Sonoma, Intel GMA900, compared to the speculated new CoreDuo, Intel GMA950 model, & considering my 4 points listed above) both models still sux ass at 3D gaming, but more than enough for regular school work, lectures & photoshopping/programming so whats the point waiting? Moreover, if I get a tablet now, life will be so much easier for me at school & work. Not to mention able to start on my online webcomic, Ratz!

Training was up yesterday, ran like 10 sets of 400m round the track at no more than 90secs per round, almost peng san at the last few rounds, but managed a 82secs at the last round, (though coach actually intended 25rounds). The running track will be closed 14th – 20th april, so training for this friday & next tuesday will very much be outside, coach hinted a relaxing 5km+ jog round the sunset way canal route, followed by strengthing exercises on easter friday morning’s training, a very much welcome compared to yesterday’s shiong training. I guess knowing this many would turn up for friday’s training I guess. SGrunners will be having their Good friday Macritchie morning run on friday, 7.30am guess I wouldn’t be able to make it then.

Life is like a box of takeaway pizza, a single entity in a box of vastness fit for a regular pizza, just like the one I’ve today after lunch. You must be surprised at me eating pizza all of a sudden, well if it won’t for dad & this company providing free pizza hut coupons for personal pan & snack combo redemption, furthermore with them expiring by 15th April, what can I do? In relation, I guess that very much explains some situations I was in these few days, whether its tons of chores to catch up with so little time, yet all couped up so small in a world so big. I had been trying to find time to blog, but didn’t considering having to finish jobs at work & chores before school reopens next week.

Few of the chores left to do includes revamping the dead download section & portfolio page over the week, hopefully before school reopens. On a sidenote, manage to find my old Unreal Tournament CD for a few hours of “let off steam sessions” with the old enforcer pistol, totally rocks. My phones’s battery is dying on me, I had been trying to look for a new phone to replacing my aging, Siemens SX1. Considering having it for almost 3 years 24/7, I guess the battery life depreciation is reasonable I guess. The LG P7200 looks nice, but it’s battery life is notorious out of the box, not my kind of phone. I guess its back to waiting then.

Yup, on my last visit to Simlim, here are the latest prices of the Memory cards I am intending to get when the price is right late this month:

Transcend 4GB SD Card – $200 SGD (As of 25th March 06, from $499 in June 05)
Kingston 2GB CF Card – $97 SGD (As of 25th March 06, from $230 in June 05)

Been monitoring the prices for about a year now. & I am glad I didn’t any purchases then or I will seriously be banging my head on the wall after finding out how much I’ve lost given how fast memory prices drop.

I will purchase the 4GB SD card when the price hits $150-180 & the 2GB CF Card $80 aimed at around end April. Other than that, any more price reduction will be redundant to me & its CHOW TIME BABY! Good things sure come to those who wait!

Today was the last cross country event for the season, being the Swift athletics association Macritchie X-Country. The run saw the standard 4.8km boys trail route though the Macritchie forest & the midway last road stretch to the finish. Generally everybody in the team did good. All got their personal PBs for the route I believe. The trail condition was relatively good today, dry & not as slippery/muddy as the SAA X-Country event last month, though it rained slightly before the event. The fastest runner came in at 14mins+ a very good timing for trail run I say, by Alan Goven.

The track team had dinner at AngMoKio hawker center thereafter with coach where we more or less ate back all the calories with carrot cake, sotong mee, etc. But we had a good chat on training etc with coach. Nevertheless a nice way to wrap up a day’s of competition.

I didn’t expect to beat my previous timings, amazingly I did consiering my condition (bloated with curry chicken from lunch, didn’t had enough sleep the night before, didn’t cabro load). With that, time to wrap it up with the timings:

Today’s Runtime: 21mins 39secs
Previous Runtime on February 19, 2006: 23mins 22secs

Improvement!