It’s the Chinese new year and of course no new year celebration to welcome to Lunar new year is complete without the inclusion of food! And lots of them. This year’s celebrations was held at the Queens college junior combination room. I’ve never been to Queen’s JCR before, only their halls for formals and apartments of friends in the area. Apparently it’s situated right on top of a loft proving rather good views of the River Cam via Sliver street and the adjacent University center (where the gyms are). Despite it’s rather small size, the JCR was decked out with plenty of sofas and furniture, not to mention being able to accommodate an odd 30 over people who turned up for the gathering.

It was organized by mainly the second and third years of the CuMaS association, the Cambridge Malaysian society (why can’t the Singaporean cookouts be just as awesome?), with many new faces, namely several year ones where we spent most of the evening meeting and integrating into the group.

CNY Reunion!

Foodies!

Yu Sheng!

Huge servings of variety of local Malaysian and Singaporean delicacies such as noodles, (Mee goreng style), Curry chicken, omelettes and Bak kut teh just to name afew. The huge group turnout calls for at least 6 rice-cooker pots of home cooked chicken rice and a double tossing Yusheng at the end of the dinner session. It was quite a big feat to prepare all the food for so many people as well.

The Lunar new year is just like any other day here in the UK, a typical work day buzzing with people on the streets, with school still on and lectures to attend, with the exception of Chinese restaurants and takeaways all closed. Chinese new year for me this year was a rather simple and fat-free one too, considering I was more selective on the ones I am able to go this year given my leg injury. Also with most of the awesome seniors who graduated last year not around in Cambridge to organize their trademarked annual steamboat dinner, I am happy to say that the food standards had not dropped either. This new year mass pot luck is one which still lives up to the legacy set by the seniors of last year.

Having said that, in the light of the Chinese new year, wishing you good health and a prosperous Lunar new year of the dragon ahead!

And so it’s December and time for a much needed blog post on the happenings so far here. Guess I was just too busy with stuff and the end of the that I had not found much time to share the happenings here as of date. The sad fact is that there is actually quite a lack of things happening here, with the exception of homework and loads of end of term pile ups and deadline reports to submit (and finally done with whew).

Having said that, Christmas here in the UK is also the time where almost everybody head back home and out of college for Christmas. Everywhere here in college seems pretty much like a dead town now in comparison to the term time buzz. The kitchens and halls get progressively quieter over the days as the holidays finally hit. The streets are all quiet, bare and empty with most stores all closed until next year. This is of course in stark contrast to the situation back home, particularly most shopping districts in Asian countries, like those in Japan, Seoul and Singapore, with the streets buzzing even with extended store opening hours till midnight.

Christmas here in the UK on the contrary is one for the family- Christmas tradition holds as a get together period for all family member and relatives alike. This means getting together back at home on Christmas day enjoying a scrumptious Christmas dinner (which also means the most expensive time of the year to travel too). This is my first year where I get to spend Christmas grounded in Cambridge due to a leg injury. Which kept me pretty much grounded here in college and made me very acquainted with Taxi drivers in getting around town as well as the hospital outpatient’s department. Due to the inconvenience of travel, I didn’t get to spent at my aunt Jenny’s place, though she never fails to always delight with her wonderful roast and Christmas cheesecake. Just a pity I can’t join her family this year.

Pre-Xmas dinner!

Roast!

Desserts!

Anyway, I won’t just stop there and call it quits. Christmas is a time of feasting and celebrations. So the least to do is to have few get people together, particularly those who remained in college during the period. There was a pre-Christmas day dinner at an upmarket restaurant in town as well as a wonderful Christmas lunch and dinner with university mates at a large rented out-of-college accommodation flat courtesy of an old friend of mine. The flat was big enough to house our Christmas day party of 25 and we had Turkey! Loads of it. Well too much turkey, 2 large birds in fact to the extent where leftovers the next few days were literally Turkey days as well.

Weather-wise this is my first winter here in Cambridge without snow. It seems this year the snow decided to head home too, it’s pretty much snow-less Christmas in Cambridge. Not to mention rather warm for winter now too. Surprisingly, there are still many trees out there with their leaves on and lush green patches of autumn grass dotted everywhere around town. Temperates here range from 5 to 11 degrees here at night which is nearly autumn weather in comparison to the sub freezing temperatures of last year and the year before.

In comparison, lets take alook at the snow that was in Cambridge the years before. Surprisingly this exact panorama taken 2 years ago by yours truly was used by my college as the official college Christmas card this year. I am honored!

Snow here in Cambridge is known to come in one big flop in December just before Christmas (well at least for the last 2 years I was here) and very much sits around slushy like a sore thumb throughout January at least. Commendably, the weather here in Cambridge is as good as it can get in the UK. Cambridge is pretty much sheltered from harsh storms and snow, given it’s location in land just north of London. So if the weather is bad here, chances it might even be worst else where.

So that’s for Christmas this year now, there was lots to eat and not as bad as I thought to be, despite being grounded. And oh thanks for the Christmas cards to those who sent yours, I had to find more wall space to pin all of them up this year.

In the meantime, Cheers and have a great Happy new year ahead!

And heyho! Summer break’s over, it’s the my third year in college and the start of Michaelmas now. A whole new world of exciting studying, homework-rejoicing and sociallife-killing fun awaits! Oh bummer.

Third year engineering here in Cambridge is where the specialization in your field actually starts, as you actually get to learn what you (or for most Singaporeans here, what your scholarship provider) want to study, with specific modules students get to choose beforehand. The case here is different to those in other UK universities, say Imperial college, where they are known for engineering themselves and where specialization of the course starts explicitly on day one (just like what they do in NUS and NTU too). The last 2 years beforehand here on the other hand were spent literally learning everything an engineer should know under the sun- electronics, thermodynamics, statics, dynamics, information, computing, mathematics, etc. That’s why my first 2 years (particularly the second) here are usually the toughest years for engineers in Cambridge university.

Looking back, as what my Directors of Studies like to say, it offers somewhat a more holistic learning viewpoint to engineering, the interesting stand here in Cambridge is that even if you intend to be an electrical engineer, you will have to understand at least civil, structure and mechanical engineering. So you won’t be a complete idiot in the other fields with at least tertiary understanding how buildings stand, mobile phones or turbine engines work. But of course at the expense of your sanity with the breakneck speeds they teach their courses here. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where you get to pack on so much to study in such short term time here.

But what doesn’t kill you does make you stronger. Having said that, you will get to some what specialize in your third year, choosing relevant modules in your chosen field of specialization. Each module has it’s own set of requirement like laboratory sessions, supervisions (often with TA, PhD students) and technical reports to write, which will be grade on positive credit.

In comparison, this is somewhat similar to the system in the States where you can jump all about different kinds of unrelated modules in your first 2 years, but not to the extent of completely going of engineering, say taking physiology, anthropology or arabic studies for instance. Only that the choices are more structured and related to engineering here. It’s somewhat a free, but not so what-free based engineering course in terms of the compulsory courses you have to go through in the first 2 years, namely called the part I and part II of the course.

Time do flies as a third year now, long are the excuses of being naive anymore, in no time I will be on my senior graduating year soon. So lets take on the new academic year in a positive light.

Gong xi fa cai! What other better way to welcome the year of the rabbit than a back to back Chinese new year feast for 5 consecutive days? And I thought last year’s 3 day steamboat affair was good. I guess it’s get better this year knowing where are all the parties are.

Before Chinese new year, (1st Feb) Day 1. We gathered our juniors and few invited guests to have a taste of tossing the traditional yusheng. Yes it was a mass yusheng event all right in college. Most of the yusheng ingredients were bought off local supermarkets in towns, with the exception of the sauces and crispy crackers brought in from Singapore by my junior. Surprisingly tossing the yusheng is still an exclusive Singaporean and Malaysian get-together traditional before the lunar new year- something even my Chinese and Taiwanese friends do not know or practice either. Our yusheng appetite is followed by a get together Formal in the college dining hall!

Steam boat gathering

Yusheng Day!

Cheers!

Day 2 of the celebrations, which is the actual new year’s day eve saw a reunion steamboat dinner at Pembroke college common room. Hosted by our “uncle” Justin, a follow Malaysian known for his awesome dinner parties. He never fail to surprise us again this year with the variety of food, all simmering in various rice cooker “steamboats” (we even had halal and non-halal pots). There were a 30 odd attendee and many new faces from the juniors, not to mention old friends from other colleges.

Day 3 saw myself being invited by my dorm mate John for a steamboat dinner at Emmanuel college with his bible study friends. We tossed yusheng again before settling down on food for the evening. We even had special Bakgua porkfloss buns, and I never thought I could ever have a go at these delicacies all the way form home right here in the UK.

Day 4 was my only low key day, and a much needed breather from all the massive calorie loading from the previous nights. It was Pasta night in my kitchen with my block mates, our only non-chinese day and man was the pasta good! :3

My 5th and last day of my Chinese new year celebration saw a massive gathering of friends in college for a steamboat in the J-block kitchens, which can accommodate big cookouts for 20 or more people at a go. I saw myself going for so many steamboat dinners in other colleges but of course no other better way to end it with my fellow college mates. This last one is memorable as I made the iconic Wanton for the steamboat, which was kinda like an experiment. To my surprise everyone loved it, even I can’t believe it myself! Kudos going out to my aunt and mum who taught me how to make them as a kid.

That’s all for now, I hope your Lunar new year was just as eventful. Happy Chinese New Year. Cheers!

Check out the Chinese new year 2011 photo gallery.

The Cambridge student diaries- 2nd term of sophomore year.

Hey mum, shez,

It had been sometime since I last wrote a decent update to you and dad, so I figured I do one now since I have some time before bed, juggling between a modest 4 hours of sleep, a project presentation and a judging panel in 5 hours time. It had been 1 week since my time back here in Cambridge from California. It’s the Lent term now and if you remember from the last year, it’s the 2nd term of the three we have here in the university.

Things are going on fine here. This term we get to get together with engineers from other colleges for an integrated project (IDP for short), where we get few weeks to build robot to perform tasks set by the lecturers and pit them against other teams. There is a prize for the best performing team. I do hope that my prior experience with robotics will give my team an edge, not to mention a headstart on our project. Interestingly, the common pitfalls for the project, as told by lecturers and my seniors are teammates being too egoistic about their potential in contributing to the team. Take it like a bunch of Red Indian chiefs in a team who only give directions and gets nothing done with no followers, or doers- definitely not good.

This came not much of a surprise for me, considering it a side effect coming from the world’s no.1 ranking university (yes, glad we beat Harvard this year:) )- You’d expect almost every student here to be somebody- once or at least a leader in a part of their lives, raging in their blood to “lead” the team to oblivion as if their lives depend on it. Initially I intended to adopt a “follow and get things done” attitude when first meeting my team, not to mention make personal sacrifices- reining myself in as a team leader for the benefit of the team and only intervene when I see the dire need to pull the team only just as they are running off a cliff.

Thankfully I have a fantastic team, everyone found themselves well into their positions and work in unison without much coaching or intervention, really what could be better? We work in teams of 6, paired 3 sub-groups of 2 (mechanical, electrical and software). My teammate is this big guy who plays for the college rugby team, despite my bulk from athletics/track and field, I just feel so tiny standing beside him.

Things back in the college dormitories gets, oh well, better too. Besides a broken fridge door in the communal kitchen which left my dorm mates stumped on how to fix it (I was the only available engineer, so it’s not a matter of choice), we got a new microwave oven just late last month- only just because some idiot tried microwaving food in a metallic bowl which completely fried the magnetron in the old oven, completely junking it.

Milk and utensil thief is evident, but not common from the fridges. Well, guess not until we all started marking all our groceries in the kitchen with permanent ink as if our livelihood depends on it. Guess that’s what you get staying with people who are so smart on the block, that common sense evades them. Then there’s the rumor of people from other dorms coming over to nick the items too. I once lost a large 2 liter tub of ice cream!

But I guess that what makes my block interesting this term. It’s these very people who I get together every weekend cooking potlucks and trying different cuisines from all over the world, it’s an ethnic melting pot, not to mention having regular games of pool, table soccer or hanging out at the pub over a good beer and drinks by the college clubroom after a long day. My immediate neighbors on my floor is a guy from Nigeria, and a girl from Denmark. Then there is this Irish and Indian girl, a Chinese and American boy who lives on the upper floors. My good friend John and this neighbor Andrew, from Canada lives on the floor below me.

Technically I had not done my laundry from my US trip, yet, mainly because I only lug off to the washer after my laundry basket’s overflowing in typical bachelor-pad style and partly, because I did a fair bit of washing and washed my blankets/duvet/bedsheets before my trip so I can leave them to completely dry for a reasonable time in my room until my return from the states (and pack them thereafter). Currently, my basket is only half-full. And no, the £2.00 fee to do a wash and dry does not give me an incentive to do more washes than I really need.

On academics, I am getting the hang of work and starting revision for the big tripos exams in less than 6 months time- not because I could, but because I know I will need it- knowing how often I usually side-track from my school work on other commitments now. Moving on, I technically… well ok, I failed my start-of-term mock exams which took place on the first day of school this term. But you can blame me on it for spending only 12 hours studying for it (lesser if you count the few hours I dosed off at the study table) once I arrived Jetlagged back at London Heathrow.

Remarkably, my supervisor wasn’t cross with my results, despite him not knowing of my blatant ordeal the night before, which I guess is synonymous to the barrage of “excuses” he receives from students everyday even if I told him anyway. He cited that “I could do better” and also considering the fact that my score was actually on the upper 70 percentile of the class, despite it being a failure. It’s hilarious in class when everybody started comparing scores to see who was the biggest loser. It turns out there was no incentive to score better or even pass- much to my supervisor’s dismay.

Currently I am up for applying for an exchange to study next year at MIT under the Cambridge University-MIT exchange program. They are quite selective on who they are bringing up this year, considering the lack of funding from the university side, completely eliminating all students from all the other departments (chemistry, physics, etc) to go. This with the exception of us lucky engineers who are fortunate enough to get a sponsorship from BP to send only 16 students over to Boston next year. You think cleaning up their oily agenda could have anything to do with it?

Jokes aside, I do hope I get selected, my grades were not totally spectacular last year, and a second class honors is the bare minimum you have to even poke your letter out of the horde of applications they receive every year. I do hope my involvement in non-academic activities and college representation will make up for it, considering that too, being the main reason why I didn’t have much time to study last year.

The weather here in Cambridge is definitely warming up. I need not dress up like a Michelin man when heading out anymore, nor being engulfed with my freezing breath fog each time I speak or during my runs. Things are warmer in London, where I do see myself frequenting more often with good friends I meet every other month. The clubs, parties and the drinks there are great too.

Chinese new year will be on in a few days time. I hope things are warming up, well literally back home. I was told by college mates (who flew back home over the holidays) of the Christmas decorations coming down around town and it’s up with the decks of Red now, particularly all around Orchard road with Chingay coming too. It’s just too cold here to even think about it. I mean the highest temperature here is like 5 degrees and that is the lowest it can ever get in California when I was there 2 weeks ago! Can’t say the same for it back home, where it’s always scorching. Anyway, I have plans lined up for the magical 3 days of the new year ushering the year of the Rabbit, with mainly college formal dinners and steam boat impromptu potlucks over at friends. I miss the reunion dinners we used to have together as a family back at home, I wish you guys at home the best for the coming lunar year. Say, talking about that, I guess it’s also time of the year where you should receive those red packets from my scholarship provider again. Amusingly and “eye-rollingly”, they always never fail to do that every year.

I still have all your Xmas card on my wall, as well as a few additional ones from friends, dormmates, acquaintances and many new buddies I made when I was in the states, yours sit at the top of all of them. The Paris trip was excellent and I got to climb up (and down) the Eiffel tower. In between a tour from San Francisco, I stayed with a friend just off the San Francisco bay, who kindly offered me to crash his couch before I toured the Santa Clara (silicon valley) and San Jose area. It was at this friend’s place where we chill out with the whole house to ourselves, watching movies over large 60 inch screens and playing Rock Band with 6 others almost everyday in the basement. There is just this much I can note down this late at night, will tell you more about my trip adventures in a separate email.

Lastly, I am thinking of fixing my ankle injury this summer when I am back in Singapore, it’s a great annoyance on my long runs and when ice-skating (as raised with my last email to you), also so I can recover proper so I can build the strength of my left leg- so I can finally get back into athletics in college and make the Varsity team. It had been ages since I last ran a marathon and very itching do be back at it again in form. I am trying to properly draft an email to docs and ask for his recommendations, which I will CC that to you and sis. This means putting me out of action for my time back home and possibly on crutches with only one good right leg. Thinking about it, I feel sorry if that might possibly foil any of your plans if you have planned for during my short return back home. It was a blast for you and dad to show my around the Marina Sands development last summer, I couldn’t feel any more loved, yet guilty for this plan now.

Oh yes, one thing, can sis do me a favor? I feel that Dad is seriously lacking in our conversations here, will it be possible to teach him how to email? I believe it won’t be as hard as the time we taught him to SMS. Possible to set him off running with an email you can setup for him? (try *censored*@gmail.com). Maybe that will help.

P.S I noticed that I’ve not updated my blog in ages, it’s real hard to keep track on what I actually do in my diaries now, and rather than trying to do dated blog posts with memories vaguely supplemented with contents dug off my Outlook “sent folder”, I will be posting excerpts of this email on my post as an update of what I am doing now to my readers. Hope you don’t mind.

Lots of Love, best regards and take care,
Shaun
=)

I noticed the obvious lack of updates here on the site for quite sometime. Don’t worry I am not dead. But pretty much caught on other forms of work, travel which kept me away from my computer at time. My move to microblogging on twitter also placed me on a different light for update on this site too.

So time and again, I do not have time to actually update my blog (gosh I am THAT busy?) in ages, it’s real hard to balance work, training, creating a new Cambridge-university exclusive social network website and keep track on what I actually do in my day to day activities and blog down the interesting bits.

I send emails regularly to my family, updating on key moments and interesting things I do worth noting, so that can provide a good indicator of what I can actually note down on this site’s blog. Well, provided if you are actually interested in reading my mediocre rambles and happenings of life, that might float your boat.

So I guess, rather than trying to do dated blog posts with memories vaguely supplemented with contents dug off my Outlook “sent folder”, I will be posting excerpts of this email on my post as an update of what I am doing now to my readers.

The student diaries, so it will be.

So what did I do for Halloween this year, well I made my own costume this year, 2 in fact. I had quite a number of parties to attend this year, so I figured I diversify my arsenal a li’ ol bit. I made a Half-life zombie costume using a bloodied labcoat and shirt, coupled with my iconic head crab hat I’ve got from the Valve store few years back, but didn’t had the chance to use it proper till now. I wore the hat to lectures on halloween day too, which gave me many thumbs up among the school crowd. Awesome experience. The college parties is a very good way to get to meet people and new friends alike. There was a werewolf pack, the undead pack (guess I am part of the undead) as well as a large number of drag (lady gaga) queens.

The wolf pack!

College halloween party!

Spin the tunes baby!

There were party events such a performances and best costume auditions. Music kept going courtesy of our resident deejay Timothy, who is an English senior from Singapore too. I made a space pirate costume for another 2 more Halloween parties in other venues, namely a pub/club called revolution, we students call it Revs here for short, which feature a pub on the ground floor and the club/dance floor on the upper. My costume feature a rather formal looking space captain coat, decked with the Starcraft 2, Matt Horner styled large shoulder pads which I made out of dominos pizza coupon cardboard. The captains/pilot hat I bought off Ebay was customized with an internal red LED circuit I made and integrated into the cap, which glowed a bright red through a plastic acrylic piece like a futuristic argumented reality heads up display.

My niffy HUD!

Saints and Sinners!

Lady ga ga?

The early part of term is a good time to catch up on parties. Chilling out with the Singapore society was fairly interesting- they are not much of a party bunch. Time and always and unlike most other halloween parties I’ve been to (like those with the local British and internationals) most Singaporeans will just wait out by the seats in the club, preferring the sit around, stone rather than party or dance on the floor. I am not implying I am heck a party animal myself, but sometimes I find really weird having to drag them out to dance as if it’s their virgin experience on the dance floor. I mean, why pay to enter a club just to sit down on the sofa the whole night and chat with blaring music all around you? Weird. It’s sad seeing most Singaporeans here in Cambridge such lowlifes, much the study bugs who had not entered a club their whole lives, yesh! And we definitely don’t get this kind of crowd in the Polytechnic, that’s for sure! College is one of the best times of your lives, make the best out of it!

Meet the ghouls

Got punkin?

By the eye!

The last of my Halloween party saw an awesome boat party along the river Thames in London. The boat is more or less a self contained floating club with active lighting on the dance floor itself. You party on any of the decks on the boat which loops around the Thames from the London docksides to Westminster/London Eye. Awesome!

Check out more photos of the Halloween event here.

As part of my university internship and industrial experience requirements, I spent the last summer back in Singapore working 8 weeks from the 26th of July to the 17th of September. I’ve got the opportunity to work on improving a large caliber weapons system currently actively employed in the Singapore Armed forces. The organisation is no Stark industries, but with some of it’s bells and whistles as a defence agency almost like Darpa in the US or the DSTL in UK. A little background, the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is a statutory board set up under the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) in Singapore. It is responsible for implementing defence technology plans, acquiring defence material, engineering, innovation and developing defence infrastructure for MINDEF.

In a hind side, DSTA aims to provide leading-edge technological solutions to the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) so that it continues to be a formidable fighting force for the defence and security of Singapore. I am tasked to work under the Guided Weapon & Armament (GW&A) Competency Community under Systems Management. The security in the organisation is much more strict than most military intuitions I’ve been to, despite the fact with interns having one of the lower security clearance in the whole building. Working in a high security environment is definitely an eye opener for me, we deal with a greater deal of classified material, it’s unreal yet cool at the same time.

With an allocated mentor supervisor, I was given the role as a junior engineer, taking on the mini project of my own. Tasked a project to independently assess, work and suggest the most cost effective solution to improve and fulfill the night engagement capabilities of a locally developed weapon system. I am given the flexibility to manage the project directly, working autonomously and deliver the project findings with respect to project milestones and datelines.

There, I’ve given the opportunity to research and work with several interesting technologies and hardware to go with it, namely:

With the following engineering procedures I applied on my own in my analysis of my options and eventual result:

Extensive life cycle analysis, including product disposal were considered. It was concluded that a modular add-on to the weapons system will give the army the flexibility to operationally deploy a variety of night aids found in the SAF inventory, which is both cost efficient and easy to implement/deploy logistically and on the field for the soldier. The suggestion of the weapon enhancement does not stop here, with areas open for further improvement as well as noting future technological possibilities which can be used to further employed to enhance the solution in the future. Following my presentation to my superiors and department head on the last week of internship, the presentation feedback is largely positive with a good chance of the recommended solution being implemented in the Singapore army itself!

Awesome!

Disclaimer: Please mind the vagueness of this post, particularly the mention of any specific weapons system. There are just so much information I can share openly besides the obvious already on the public domain. Cheerios!