Excerpt from the Boston globe: 2008 has been an eventful year to say the least – it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I’ve done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It’s not the story of 2008, it’s certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days.

The year 2008 in photographs
Part one
Part two
Part three

Thumbdrives don’t grow on trees, neither can you find them with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Find out how this minute everyday object is made by going through a tour of the Kingston memory thumbdrive production line. Interesting watch.

It’s a little more than a month before the Michaelmas term begins in October. Time do passes very fast and before you know it, it’s time for studies again. I just feel that I am really running out of time for the things to do before flying abroad. My calendar is packed to the brim and there is just simply too much to be done now. Anyway, it had been sometime since I blogged about personal matters, so I will just talk about them here in segments.

Catching up with the gang
Despite all these commitments, I guess a promise is still a promise, particularly towards those I rejected for meets given my absence in Singapore over the last period. Yes, it had been quite a pain rejecting everybody who wanted a causal meet/farewell before I fly off, but I was not available then. So what is left to do for the rest of August is to call up my friends, cousins, classmates and clients to get all the appointments/outings/events/dinner/lunches organized. Feel so bad that I was not able to do so presently now as I am still recovering from an ankle injury, so I won’t be running much this year end, nor take part in the year end Marathon this year as well. Oh bummer.

Retail therapy
Nevertheless, been purchasing quite alot of things in prep for the term as well. In addition to my formidable wall of textbooks which I will be shipping up with all my poly notes and textbooks, I will be also getting myself a new laptop which will be my new primary computer, replacing my current desktop PC which will be left here in Singapore. This laptop is an Core-i7 running on the X58 chipset with 6GB of DDR3 Ram in triple channel. And it’s kinda rated better in productivity than my desktop too, only that it weighs 5kg.

Got myself a new SOG B61-N EOD PowerLock multi-tool together with new pair of Oakley Jackknife 4.0 glasses, you can check out the review I did on Oakleys on Amazon.com here. Will be installing transitions on this bad baby.

Windows 7 RTM
Windows 7 RTM had been released off MSDN and I am still stuck on vista till I get the retail on October 22th. Microsoft had offered me a discounted one year tech-net subscription at S$458, which allows me to download Win7 as well as Office 2010 when it’s released. Still contemplating whether I should go for it.

Flight to Cambridge
With my short stay here in Singapore, I will be off in about a month’s time as well. My flight to London will be scheduled on the 25th September, on an A380. The thing which still puzzles me is why a 2 single trip tickets up to London cost about twice as much as a single return ticket.

Go figure!

Thanks Lyla Lin for sending me the official details of the event. Many thanks also going out to the various runners who sent me updates on the event and reporting the error I had for this event on my 2009 listings page.

RUN FOR HOPE 2009
Today’s Research. Tomorrow’s Cure.

Run For Hope 2009, the most established non-competitive charity running event in support of cancer research here in Singapore, will take place at east coast park with the following details:

About Run For Hope
In its 17th year, Run For Hope is an annual campaign organized by The Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts (The Regent and The Four Seasons Hotels in Singapore) in Singapore to support cancer research benefiting the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS).

Local Cancer Statistics
In Singapore, cancers account for approximately one in three deaths. Over the last decade, 9,000 Singaporean men have been diagnosed with colorectal, lung and prostate cancers, while 11,000 women were diagnosed with breast, colorectal and lung cancers. NCCS plays a pivotal role in the holistic care and multidisciplinary-based treatment of cancer patients. To date, NCCS has over 80 nurses and 100 doctors serving close to 70 percent of the cancer community in Singapore. With around 200 researchers, NCCS is also driving the leading edge of medical innovation by exploring the different facets of the disease for a breakthrough in cancer treatment and diagnosis.

Between January 2007 and mid 2009, the NCC Research Fund had supported 28 research projects totaling close to SGD$10 million. The NCC Research Fund focuses on providing two levels of funding needs: first, seeding funds to kick-start emerging research by supporting young scientists and second, bridging funds to sustain the momentum of research productivity for on-going projects. Innovative medicine predicates on quality research, which requires ample philanthropic support.

Since my unconditional undergrad offer to study engineering in Cambridge, I’ve never really found the time to write about my experience of the selection process and the interview I went through to be shortlisted. But heck it was really competitive, going against the top dogs in the best JCs in Singapore, not to mention scholars from around the region as well- A dinky neighborhood schooled and polytechnic student like me really felt out of place there, but I am glad I made the difference. I will just share part of the experience here.

The interview
The interviewer started by seeing me into the room after shaking hands and exchanging greetings. The room was set in a dimly lit incandescent atmosphere, very cozy, warm and casual, despite the presence of classroom florescent lights- which were left off. This is very unlike interviews we have in Singapore universities, particularly the one I went for scholarships where everything seem to be quite alot more ridged and authoritative.

We started with some icebreaker questions, the interviewer amusingly said that I was the first so far he had interviewed in Singapore who came from a polytechnic background, something very fresh and different from all the other A-level students he had interviewed so far. Though I do not want to draw any conclusions from that remark I guess I was a breakaway from the traditional stereotype which usually only makes up of junior college students.

So the questions, we started with quite a few general maths questions, followed by curve sketching. In my case, these were logarithmic curves and polynomials with or without asymptotes. I managed to get all of them sketched, but was stuck on the last. The interviewer, seeing that I was stuck nudged me in the right direction at times providing hints and we managed to solve the last one together. That came out quite without a hitch, though I do not really favor like such questions which can be done by memorizing math textbooks.

Next I was told that a large part of engineer’s work involves in the estimation of quantities, so I was told to calculate the mass of oxygen in the classroom we are in. Ahha! finally, a proper “thinking question”. That was fairly straight forward, but otherwise still quite linear as well. So digging from the depths of my cranium on thermodynamics, I managed to derive a formula using the ideal gas equation, with temperature, pressure constant and using the volume of air in the room (which can measured and calculated) to find the number of mols in the air, then multiplied by the constituent percentage of oxygen in the air and the relative atomic mass of a pair of oxygen atoms from the periodic table itself. And.. there’s the answer to “umm 3 s.f?” I exclaimed. The interviewer simply chuckled and nodded lightly on hearing that. Fair enough, but I guess no eye-brows raised from the interviewers though, then things started to be more interesting.

Managed to catch a web telecast of this year’s national day parade 2009. This year’s one is impressive in my own opinion, despite usually being a sore thumb (hehe) and a big critique to all the previous NDPs. Surprisingly, gone are the trying to hard cheesy theme songs usually evident in NDP parades for years at a go. Commendable is the effort to go back to the NDP roots, using what worked. The performance did display a rather descent effort into using those old national days songs which I guess, for many of us grew up and are synomomous with- beats any new dinky NDP anytime. The stage and lighting are world class and those performances put up, particularly those by the touch community are rather pleasing as well.

And I guess my feedback to them last year for more home grown songs have nothing to do with it. All I believe the real heroes for this year’s NDP will be the creative directors, let be the music director for for the various back to back remixes of old NDP songs, wrapped up with a real nice new twist to the national anthem, as opposed to the rather stereotypical and conservative approach of previous NDPs.

The organisers did a good job by showcasing the performance in a group, not focus to any particular celebrity or “special guest” after all this is a celebration for the nation and not a publicity stunt. This reaffirms the theme “come together” as one people one nation, which should be the case.

Watching the NDP does bring back alot of memories, particularly myself as a performer myself in the 1997 NDP almost more than 10 years ago. Just as everyone enjoying their long holidays now, I guess it’s something more than deserving than a pat on the back well done.

Happy 44th Birthday Singapore!