It was devastating, nine days after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake killed hundreds of people in south-central Chile, relief efforts were beginning to reach those in need, rescue missions became recovery missions, and rebuilding is already under way. In the days since the February 27th quake, nearly 150 aftershocks have been recorded, including thirteen above magnitude 6.0.

Despite the rush of humanitarian aid to all affected areas, the government has been criticized by Chileans, who say the response was slow and inefficient. One recent government action was to grant a short amnesty to looters before sending troops out in search of stolen goods. Nearly $2 million worth of looted items were returned, often dumped on roadsides, by Sunday.

Collected here are photographs from the past week in quake-affected Chile.

Credit – Boston.com, Read more: Chile, nine days later

Welcome the year of the tiger! A whole new year on the lunar calendar. There had been much talk among the Chinese group here in Cambridge with regards to the new year, particularly how it is celebrated in various countries, with experiences of their own, let be in China or Malaysia.

Things here in the UK are very different from what it will be at home- No fancy Chinese new year lighting, blaring music from homeland shops, the endless looping of Chinese new year songs in most public areas, let be departmental stores. Things here are just as it is of a normal work day, not a single piece of decoration on the streets and bummer it’s not a holiday too. Angbaos were literally non-existent.

Though most Chinese new year festive and event lineups can be found in most Chinese cultural clubs in the university, there was an obvious lacking of the fun and joy of Chinese new year we all grew up with anticipating every year back home. The main sizable celebrations closest to us will be the Chinese new year celebrations in London itself- to our dismay an event held smacked right in the middle of our school term, so we can’t do anything much about it. There are of course some exceptional few I was told about from China who literally flew back home just for 3 days so they can have reunion dinner, that’s crazy but I dwell more about that.

Personally I did not have any festive plans lined up over the Chinese new year weekend, with only plans to attend a Chinese new year formal (dinner) in college on the Friday (12th) before Chinese new year. Planned for the actual day with be only a video conference (virtual pai-nian) with my family, wishing them a happy new year and calling it done by rewarding myself with a good home cooked meal in the evening. Little do I know things won’t go quite as intended.

College CNY formal (Fri)
The formal hall I planned on going was quite a bunch. And I am glad my college did have Chinese new year specific plans and a Chinese menu for that day as well and man was the turnout exceptional as well- full house! We had a 6 course meal with appetizers, Peking duck, chow mien (fried noodles) and bean sprout vegetable mix. Though much attempt had been tried to make the dishes as authentic as possible, it still does not taste as good as the ones prepared by Chinese chefs back home. Desserts, coffee and fruits followed after. Free flow of Wine, Champagne and port (dessert wine) was served as well.

Queen’s reunion dinner (Sat)
Just few days before the weekend. I received an invite to an engineer’s reunion dinner on that following Saturday from a fellow 1st year course mate in Queen’s college. Apparently we will be having a steamboat style dinner with all the year one Engineers as well as some 2nd year Singaporean lawyers. The setup was simple: 4 rice cookers (which doubled up as boilers for the steamboat), a spread of food for about 10 persons and lots of Chinese new year songs from a laptop courtesy of Youtube. It was a rather fun informal steamboat dinner all huddled and eating from our temporary “floor table” in the host’s dorm room, which was remarkably large and able to hold over 10 guests with ease. The dinner was simple, but served it’s purpose well as a reunion dinner and I say, a rather proper one.

Steamboat at Queens

Malaysia Steamboat Dinner

Drunk on CNY!

CUMAS Steamboat Dinner (Sun)
Just when I thought 2 events were enough. This 3rd event was held on the actual day (14th) of Chinese new year itself at Pembroke college. I got to attend the event courtesy of my roommate who unexpectedly offered me an invite to the event just few days beforehand. He is a committee member of the Cambridge Uni Malaysian society (CUMAS). There was another small Singaporean cookout which I could not attend as I’ve already RSVP to the latter. I was not disappointed as well- this event was much bigger than the one I went the day before, not to mention with a larger variety of foods and larger turn up as well (about 30 odd people). The food spread was commendably good and comparable to that of commercial steamboat joints. Did we had such a good time, a Chinese new year’s day dinner (aka V day as well) worthy for the occasion itself.

There were yum-sengs and lots of chatter with new friends. With the exception of the absence of yu-sheng not only in this event, but in the other 2 events too, apparently this is something only unique to Singapore and Malaysia. Oh yes then there was the feat of sobering up a few after the event as well.

Seems that my Chinese new year weekend turned out rather more eventful than I initially expected! And I have largely my fellow course and room mates to thank for a fantastic Chinese new year lineup to user in the year of the tigger!

I’ve signed up as a helper for the food festival since early last term. So that very much grants me “free” entry to the event, which by itself costs £7 for members and £11 for non-members, not that actually was part of the agenda! I was rather clueless when I placed my name down to help. The day started out with some supervisions in the afternoon (yes I know it’s a bummer to have supervisions over the weekend). Little do I find myself prepared for the daunting task ahead to prepare dinner for well over a 100 guests.

Cumsa Asian Food Festival 2010

Food’s out

More cooking to do!

Nonetheless, that Saturday afternoon was spent preparing Chicken rice, as well as cooking all the chicken. Chicken rice is one of the main courses to be served for the event, which goes hand in hand with Pak choy (vegetables) with other local dishes such as Bak ku teh (pork rib spices soup), Loh bak (black sauce meat and eggs), as well as Laska. There were also appetizers, servings of the famous rose syrup bandung as well as bobochaha for desserts. I opened the place up in the late afternoon so that phase 2 of cooking can be done at the hall venue, where they have a kitchen which we can use too.

Besides cooking the rice and chicken, the hard part was myself doing most of the cooking for the vegetable dish, which easily saw me through over 25-30 packets of Pak choy and having to separate, wash and cook over 100 stalks of the vegetable. I guess that will keep me away from it for sometime. We did encounter quite problems ourselves too, such as being unable to reheat the rice, so it was quite a pain to serve all the guest cold food, particularly the rice. But I think everyone received that as OK, with no complains as I know of.

Chicken Rice!

Laska

Bobochaha!

The event was a success, and the guests were all generally happy with the food from the feedback we get as servers. The same can’t be said for all of us though. Sadly, we ourselves as organizers literally have nothing to eat from mid afternoon onwards to late. It’s not until about 10pm where the guests start leaving where everyone started to have dinner.

Well not that we actually prepared dinner for ourselves, but rather savaging-ly dined with whatever food is left in the kitchen as well as those collected/cleared from the guest tables. Not that was bad, but hey at least we get to try what we cooked! We had enough food leftover for everyone (with excess to spare) mainly from the bulk of the leftovers from the last few dishes where many guests could not finish, coining out the term “serve the dishes you want to eat, last”. Much of the the leftovers were all meats and rice, not to mention some half eaten bobochaha, which wasn’t too much of my liking contrary to some who just slurpped them all. There were no left overs of the vegetables I’ve prepared too- they were all wiped clean!

Looking back at what we had prepared, that was really quite some feat we had pulled out, not to mention the number of bowls of food we all went into making for the all the guest. We have pretty much have each other to thank: the committee and the helpers for a job well done.

It interesting that such technology and capability already existed ages ago, but no one seemed to put it all together for the consumer. Apple seem to always get that right, this time they are doing it again with a new slate tablet computer called the iPad.

At first glance, it looks like an over sized iPhone, which the distinctive bezel, form factor and home button. It’s not running the full workstation-capable version of OS 10 contrary to much speculation, but rather a portable-enhanced version of OS 10 which is largely similar to the interface on the iPhone, for a larger screen. It comes in 2 favors, Wi-Fi or one with additional 3G in 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB capacities on flash drives.

The fun device seems to cater for a void in the market which tries to be neither on both ends, namely a phone nor a work-capable computer. If you need an, it will only truly shine for it’s wireless capabilities and size, so it will be wise to get the one with 3G. Otherwise, it will just be a regular slate with no noticeable selling points. To me, the iPad seem to fit into the market for people looking to have a device around the house for quick access to emails and the internet, but not much one being a full-fledged computer, something which might rival the iMac or iBook. So technically it’s in a class of it’s own filling the void between the iPhone and the iMacs.

Though multi-touch may be a selling point, capacitive touch screens are good for gesture based commands and navigating menus. Not exactly that impressive for writing, something a tablet must be good at. Capacitive touch screens are just simply something notorious for precision. Moreover, I don’t see a need for a slate, being a tablet user myself for almost 5 years, having used on screen digitizers (wacom penabled screens) on convertible slates as well as traditional pen based drawing tablets (intuos4) from wacom, I find the lack of precision of the screen a big turn down for a promising product- It is just not as practical as I’ve expected it to be too. In short, the precision offered on dedicated tablets is very important and is something I don’t see the iPad fitting well into my needs as a student who needs to use a tablet for lectures as a student, let be precise enough to take down notes or do drawings accurately on.

The iPad is after all, a fun product not intended for work. Like, the iPod touch bigger brother. An expensive toy.

Hardware-wise, it does bags 10 hours of battery life. But big no nos will be the lack of a user-replaceable battery and a small resolution XGA screen- You can’t really call the slate an internet machine with a screen resolution of 1024×768! The 1Ghz A4 processor of the iPad is adequate, despite not being as speedy as most mainstream tablets on the market now. This apple designed processor is largely tailored to the basic needs of the device and OS, thus would be adequate for the basic functions it aims to serve, don’t expect it to be much of a production computer though.

The really cool thing I like about it is that it can run literally all iPhone apps on it out of the box, so that will allow many users to port over from existing iPhone platform and also establishing a good base for the new product to grow on.

I can’t deny that the device is indeed very pretty, but it will never be powerful enough to be justifiable to do descent work as a proper computer or for school, etc, yet too big to conveniently carry around as a portable device. It’s trying to be something, but not really found it yet. Anyway, with apple aggressively promoting the iPad SDK since it’s launch, it will be fair however to give it some time for iPad dedicated apps to grow on it where it’s functionalities can be truly realized. But for now, and for me, I will be putting my money for the next gen iPhone maybe coming out in June, that will be a better choice.

Video of the iPad at the click:

I had this problem with iTunes previously, but solved the problem by reverting the program, so I am posting this here in case anyone who experienced the problem on a same setup can get a solution here.

After updating iTunes on my PC to the spanking new 9.0.2 64-bits to suit my current system platform, I kept getting numerous errors whenever I try to install new apps on my phone. The system will just fail an app install each time and will demand a phone restore each time I plug the phone back into the sync cable. Bad!

Also, what you will get from iTunes will be a myriad of irritating, yet not very helpful error messages only the person who wrote the program knows about. I mean who knows error codes man? So much for user friendly apple software!

Seemingly, the programs are not installed at all on the phone, but with the icons showing on the springboard. True enough, launching them will crash you back to the homescreen. iTunes will simply just hate your iPhone (Latest firmware 3.1.2) and treat it like some foreign virus, demanding it be cleansed with a restored backup each time after plugging your phone into your PC.

I’ve heard about file permission errors in the iTunes music directory. Sometimes, R-clicking on your iTunes music folder C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes and unchecking “Read only” under “Properties” will help.

In the end, it turned out that it’s an iTunes program error with the 64-bit version. Apparently, the latest iTunes 9.0.2 64-bit does not work on my setup running Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate. Force installing (the installer will recommend you to install the 64-bit version) the 9.0.2 iTunes 32-bit version makes everything work like a charm.

What other cooler way to mark the end of the university’s 800th anniversary celebration with a cool and ambient lightshow held at night with fire art performances? Apparently, the whole stretch along Cambridge King’s parade street was closed for much of the night’s last week for the event, consisting mostly of laser and light shows. The crowds are evident as well- with the roads packed and queues to the event snaking out onto the streets.

People passing by during the evening will be delighted with much of a treat- Lasers and life performances by the Fire Troupe, consisting of fire breathers and eaters. There was much to see. You will be greeted at entrance to the event with a splash of animation projected onto the senate house. The white walls of the house made an ideal projection surface for the myriad of lively and brightly animated features seemingly “painted” onto it’s walls.

It’s no other painting either, each animation segment is uniquely different and animated to tell a story about the university’s rich history, intentions and foundlings of the university as a global world leader in education with an alumni of 85 Nobel Laureates. Notable figures shown will also include Issac Newton & Charles Darwin.

Woot projection!

Transforming the senate house

Animated pictures & text

The event saw a tour around the King’s college grounds, demarcated by thin green electro-luminescent strips lining the path taking us towards the college chapel and along the river Cambridge. There, another set of animated projections were displayed on the chapel and adjacent building walls. Ambient sounds were played throughout the tour path, giving the area a rather upbeat feel despite the dark eerie setting required for the projections to be effective. The place was packed almost bumper to bumper, as remarked by some: “This is the amount of traffic King’s will get the whole year in one day!”. The tour ends with a globe laser display at the green towards the gate exits, painting the global outreach Cambridge have in education as well as constantly echoing the slogan “transforming tomorrow”.

King’s college chapel

The crowds

The lasers at the end

The show was great, but otherwise not really much an eye opener. However, it actually gave me a chance to tour and see King’s college in the night- something I’ve not had the opportunity to do so. “Apparently it’s the same as what they did for the opening ceremony last year as well” as exclaimed my seniors. Nonetheless, everything was rather new for me and I guess something worth-wide to mark the end of 800th years of achievement. I don’t think we may be seeing another celebration as big as this, well for a long time to come.

Caught Avatar 3D yesterday afternoon at the Vue Cinema in Grafton shopping center. Yes I know it’s been a month since it was released and everyone had already watched it, let be some even 2 to 3 times, so this rant is not new. But I had not really been watching movies very often these days, let be even only major ones over the yesteryear. But when I saw the trailer to the show last year I told myself that it’s a show I will definitely have to watch.

And I did, and was blown away by the show. At the end of the show. I was lost for words, far beyond thinking ages since I’ve left a theater after a show feeling so captured, so memorized- I was torn beyond words to even describe how good the show was. Let be even forget about the high ticket price (despite it already heavily discounted at £6.95) I paid to watch the show in 3D. The experience the show provided was even worth more than the price. It was a show which I left the theater still overwhelmed, it’s just that fantastic.

One thing I like about adventure, sci-fi shows is that it immerses the viewer into a whole unique world given it’s rather bizarre ecosystem, told over a brilliant storyline and fantastic soundtrack (which I can’t stop listenng now) which amazes audiences at every corner of the planet Pandora. Well though as saying goes, sex sells, but I think the skimpy sexy Na’vis are just part of the main attraction in the show.

The show also blends in the world of nature, science and technology as an insight to a world as envisioned by James Cameron himself. All brought to life true a new frontier and setting a new benchmark for 3D and animated CG films (including human motion tracking film) since Final Fantasy, the spirits within wowed us almost a decade ago. And you need not to be an animator to enjoy the film by the polygon!

Avatar, though only 4 years in the making (since 2005) the story was actually written in 1995 over a period of 3 weeks, after James was done with the Titanic. It was set for a 1999 release, but CG and film technology was not mature enough to make the film as he envisioned it to be, until now. James is not done with Pandora just yet- A sequel is confirmed by himself and it’s rumored that the sequels could look at the interior of Pandora, possiblity introducing us more of the ecosystem as well as Pandora’s marine life. Apparently James Cameron has a whole underwater landscape mapped out. Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) and Zoe Saldana (Neytiri) have signed for a trilogy. With rumors of the return of RDA’s Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and Secops’s Quaritch (Stephen Lang).

“Avatar” earned it’s place in the record books as the most successful and highest grossing Sci-Fi movie in history, I won’t be surprised if this show gets an award this year for Best picture and I believe they will, deservingly. For me, this masterpiece will get definitely get a place in my video collection when it releases on Blu-ray or DVD.

It snowed throughout last night, what better way there is than to spend the day before touring UK with a snowy white Christmas here in Cambridge? Whoohoo! *fluffs* It had been about 8 and 14 years (if I remember correctly) since I last played with real snow. And it feels just like the morning of Christmas like a kid again. Snow was quite an eyeopener for my course mate, Jeff, with his virgin encounter with snow, nevertheless he quickly got quite acquainted with the white fluff from another world. Had some minor snow fights, rolling snow balls, snow angels and touching up a snowman. Maybe I might raise the notch up next time with a fort fight. But hey it’s not really Christmas without the snow right?

The town really looked different decked in white. Spent much time in the afternoon exploring the town all covered in white. It gets real dangerous when the snow starts to harden, leaving a layer of thin ice on the road which is a real hazard to vehicles, particularly bicycles as well. Even walking on the pavement is really a cross-terrain challenge or speed and balance! It snowed sometime around this time of the year last year, but not so soon, so apparently the weather was quite a surprise as it was last year as well. Seems that the winters are getting colder and whiter here so as those who stay here exclaimed!

Took some cool pictures of town, including a new panorama I’ve included in my photostitch page.

Saw Jeff off at the coach stop in the afternoon, pushed and helped him lock his bike at the rail station about 1.5km away for his planned return journey. He will be heading up to London to meet the gang beforehand today. Later do I know that the walk back to college is not a smooth-going as I thought! Smooth-going in a literal sense- the pavements are just too slippery to walk! And I went “Sploosh!” on a sidewalk which looked like a small puddle, but underestimated the depth (my whole shoe literally went under…). Oh yea, saw quite a number of people slipping and falling over ice on the streets today as well (tries hard not to snicker), hilarious! You can get traction by walking on the snowy pavements which will only wet your feet! Reached back with wet socks after walking 6km in total and man, it was a full leg workout alright! Like a long balancing act man, despite it being a walk. It’s almost like walking the whole distance on a balancing beam!

I will be leaving to Wales tomorrow morning through London, meeting the gang all directly tomorrow afternoon in Cardiff.

I hope I will be able to find time during my travels to sneak and update here and there, as we do get Wi-fi on the buses and trains. For now, I did better finish packing my stuff. I will be back in Cambridge after the new year!.

Had some problems with my bank a few days ago. Apparently I was charged like 3 pounds from my account without any notice, clarified that with that at the branch and was told it was a stray bank charge and they immediately refunded the value in full. Scary!

Banks are different here and the bank’s online facility is quite unique from that back home in Singapore as well- yes we have to key in the bank pin and password each time you log on, the catch is that you are not allowed to enter the password in full, but rather key in 3-4 characters from your long passwords and pin based on their character position, mental!

And yes, the secure card reader don’t seem to have much use either. Why don’t they just use those 256-bit pin verification dongles? Buying stuff online works through the same verification method as well, but is not that “secure” as I expected it to be. Tried to purchase my oyster card online via the transport for London website, but the website kept telling me that the transaction was unsuccessful and to submit another. I assumed that I was not charged and the transaction didn’t go through due to a verification problem (you have to key in passwords, pin numbers, have the correct address etc), but my bank statement didn’t state otherwise- I was charged the full value of £23 (£20 value + £3 card value) each time even for a failed payment and was refunded only 2 times automatically from the website.

The bank representative explained little of the workings here on their debit cards, apparently every charge to a card successful or not will be treated as a point of sale transaction, only where the payment is verified where the card be actually charged. Go figure! but my bank balance don’t seem to be saying so!

I have to be more careful buying stuff online now, all these rouge charges are getting hard to keep track on!

It’s important but not Urgent!
With term ended a week ago, had about a whiff of freedom and lots to procrastinate, well so as it had been now. I remembered dreading the long days in lectures and supervisions of the previous term, always hoping for some breather off so I can consolidate and get work on track. Then I discovered what weekends are best used for. Well, till I wished they were longer as well as I never had enough time to get backdated work done and they always just end up in a viscous cycle, piling up almost no end in sight. That had to stop, one day. Then suddenly comes this offset of freedom.

Just like the fun and lightness of the new ice skating fair ground on Parker’s piece, this holiday felt strange, a direct contrast so unreal- no nagging alarms, dragging myself to make breakfast everyday in the dark and cycling at break-neck speeds to the department in time for lectures hoping not getting hit by traffic along the way. Go figure, well that’s life of a typical Cambridge university student.

Come to think about it, I had not actually got anything academic done till date. Spent much of the early week getting chores and dated freelancing projects settled. At least that is all done with a load off my chest so I can focus. It had been sometime since I’ve trained my brain to work on a schedule and I guess it’s not too late to get myself onto a stringent routine. So school work is next.

Holiday plans
Oh yes, I will be staying over in Cambridge for much of the holidays, most people I know will be heading back home for Christmas, but that’s something I find unjustifiable, let be costly for just a short 6 week vacation. On the contrary, I will be spending Christmas over with Aunt Jenny’s- she’s an old family friend in Hampshire who invited me over to spend Christmas with her family. Went around hunting for some gifts in town after sending Christmas cards home at the post office. After much consultation for an appropriate gift, finally settled for a niffy box of chocolates and a bottle of wine for them.

Now all I have to do is decide on my mode of transport there. I am very much torn between choosing the coach or train to get to Farnborough through London. Initially, I wanted to take the train to King’s Cross and London Underground my way to Victoria station or Heathrow to catch a connecting coach to Hampshire, it’s being the fastest and cheapest solution. The underground is cool, but I’ve not actually seen much of London myself, and I don’t want to pride myself having traveled London, but only in the tunnels!

So yup, that will be the coach for me there and keeping my options open for the underground trip back, which may not be a bad idea after all- I will be spending the new year’s and the countdown in the heart of London thereafter. Yay!

Woohoo better-than-dominos quality pizza with the same 2 for 1 offer in a restaurant, how else can it be better? Apparently it’s possible with coupons! and lots of them! Headed up to Pizza express situated near Jesus College with the gang for dinner recently, the chow down was definitely not possible without the website my friends discovered while hunting for the best food deals in town. This funky website goes by the name of Student beans and can be useful if you are a student on a budget here.

So apparently we all students entered this rather “posh looking” joint (which we all definitely looked out of place). It was rather hilarious when our “voucher mastermind” kept clarifying with the waiter there whether we can use those printed coupons off the net, before we ordered and even when we are paying, man it does adds to the cheapness which we students already have. But hey if you are asking for dinner on a budget that’s the least you can do. And hey at least the Pizza was great and so was the venue!

Word of good buys can go a far way, well despite the financial situation of the store actually offering the bargains. Borders UK and it’s current owners and joint administrators are currently working with the company’s management in order to attempt to sell the business as a going concern. Much of Border’s UK operations are winding down as well, and they are no longer accepting orders and transactions through its website. All stores are still open with sales up to 30% all books whilst the financial position of the Company is currently being assessed.

Borders (UK) Limited has 45 stores, 36 trading as Borders and 9 as Books Etc across the UK. They always have this typical trademark style in their stores which I always adore- a humongous store layout with all books unwrapped for browsing, just like a library with lots of browsing/seating areas often with a cafe always nearby. “Borrowing” a book home, well means of course involves purchasing it, but hey there are no due dates right?

It is just sad that they have to go, it will leave a big hole in the retail scene particularly in the small city of Cambridge. Since my visit to the store yesterday, apparently business is real good with about a third of the books already wiped out from the store. Had a chat there with the staff who were really grateful to the mass of people expressing concern on the financial situation of the company. They are all as lost in the state of things now with hope of finding a buyer for the chain of store and saving the franchise here. There is no word of the financial state of Borders in the US or back home in Singapore, but I think the situation is not as bleak as it is here, well or that I know of from home?

Today is the last day of term! Two months of back to back hectic lectures, supervisions and lab, all over! well for 6 weeks of term break at least. And whoa was it hectic. Quite notably, the pace of classes going on here in the department are so fast it can be compared to almost a half a semester of teaching (5-6 months) in the polytechnic all covered over a span less than 2 months!

It’s remarkable, yet something I am glad I survived even after spending sometime out from studying. In stark comparison, even friends I know in other universities are not that pressed, with still much bumming around even after the first week of term. Maybe it’s just something about the demands of Cambridge which is as synonymous with it’s name.

Christmas get-together
There are quite alot of end term events on these days. There was a Christmas pot luck organsied by the Cambridge CCCJ this evening at the halls, well it’s not really much of a pot luck anyway with home-cooked buffet style serving of dinner, dessert, followed by some acts, performances and lots of Christmas carols throughout the night. It’s the season to be jolly!

Christmas get-together dinner

Performance Skit

Singing christmas carols

With so much free time now comes great responsibility to use it. Man it’s almost like the weekends I look forward to at the end of every week, it that it’s happening everyday now, whee!

Last week was exceptionally busy, particularly with term coming to and end in about 1 weeks time. Time do pass rather fast when you are buried with work almost literally every day! I even do not have time to send out Christmas cards yet, despite having telling myself to send them weeks ago!

Nevertheless, some interesting things note over the past week was the rather unpredictable weather here at this time of the year. Strangely as I was told by my seniors, it usually do not rain as much as it does last year. This year is exceptionally “wet”. So as I come to learn the hard way as well.

I was caught in a downpour when cycling back from a from another college supervision about 2 weeks ago. I was literally drenched despite having much clothing on me, but that didn’t make much of a difference as they are all cotton and not water repellent! Dang! was that a night to remember, I was literally “sick” the following 1 and a half weeks after, not that I was down with a bad fever, but had those lingering symptoms which makes you feel horrible and won’t go away. I had a bad sore throat which slowly developed into a bad cough, (which proved rather interesting in developing the coughing chain-reaction in lectures). I am actually getting better now and so appreciate hot drinks now- something which I never did so back in tropical Singapore. It’s just wonders what a nice hot cup of green tea can do to not only soothe your throat but warm your day up as well.

“You always bring a jacket out in England!” So as I learned from a causal chat with my block cleaner when making breakfast one day in the kitchen. She’s a nice lady to chat with where she goes about her rounds in the morning sprucing up our rooms and common area. Interesting were her stories of how strong the wind gets here, it can get so gusty, it can literally smash windows or even blow your balance off your bicycle!

Ok, that much I have for this update, the rest of them can go in photos:

Touch the sundial!

Bike overload!

Everything tastes like chicken!

Oh yes, we had another cookout, this time with a group of Malaysians living round my block! We experimented with Maggi Goreng and had curry chicken as well! Just like food back at home here! whoa! The ride back home with the groceries for the cookout was rather interesting as well. Tested out the fancy new pannier bags I’ve brought from Amazon and they are really good to transporting loads off stuff on your bicycle. Full trolley visits to Tesco are a breeze now!

Meegoreng? Goreng!

Operation Chicken Lice!

The Meegoreng cookout gang!

Oh well, that is all for now. The weekend is here!

And come to think about it, nothing much had changed in terms of how the city is still laid out today, specifically the trademark cable cars! This video really want to make me want to visit the place again. It also makes you wonder what things will be like 100 years from now and how people in the future will see us living today. Go figure!

A quick fix which worked for me till Microsoft releases an official fix is to revert the office registry settings back to the default value, (well despite my Office install being still largely set on default). That means renaming the current registry values to an alternative backup value so that word can re-create the registry values again.

Click start and under run, type “regedit” (start -> Run-> enter “regedit”). The registry editor will pop up and navigate to: CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Office. From there, do the following:

Make sure that word is closed when doing this. After that start word and you should be able to click on text and drag the scroll bar using your mouse. Unless if you are really sure of what you are doing, do create a registry backup before altering any values on the editor, do this at your own risk. But if anything crops out, you can always rename your registry values back to the original values.

There was social last weekend at the CUMSA club (Cambridge University Malaysia and Singapore Association) and ironically it was actually founded by Lee Kuan Yew, LKY almost 60 years ago in 1948. Well not that I actually knew of it when I joined. Haha anyway, I kinda signed up as a lifetime member with the club. It was games night last Saturday and we had quite some ummmm fun, as you can see in the pictures, hey it’s a social event after all right?

Deck out the Wii!

Table games

And there’s always CS!

Besides the doses of fizzy drinks and oily fingers from food, it was largely a social event, we had games, Nintendo Wii, poker, card, board games and the best part (and why I was there) LAN gaming! Yea Counter-strike, DOTA and possibility L4D in the future as well. A fragfest it was, a much needed one too after a long week. Wahahaha I don’t think LKY envisioned his club as it being such as now, haha but at least we are keeping on with the times!

Food Alert!
Play hard? Also work hard! I was literally packed over the weekend, I had to submit a report and 2 example papers homework over the weekend, so I was relatively busy, so were the lack of updates as well. But that didn’t stop me from organising my first cookout over the last weekend! as well, that was earlier that same Saturday as well!

Turn this stuff

into THIS!

Yea! I love cookouts!

I initially wanted to prepare linguine with clams, but Saintsbury’s (aka their NTUC or cold-storage) was out of clam chowder, so I had to settle for beef stew with a vegetable mix instead of the sauce. Top it up with some smoked ham and going generous in helping some of my college mates finish up some soon-to-be-expired eggs. I prepared my first cookout!

Yea, a cookout for the gang as well. Ahah not bad for my first! I COOKED THAT Wahahah!
Oh yes, in short, that is pasta with beef stew, cabbage vege-mix, scrambled eggs, shredded ham and leafy vegetables, very wholesome!

Lastly on the weather, despite winter being quite far off, it gets cold enough here at night and in the mornings to “smoke from your mouth” when you speak. I think it hits close to freezing here at night, despite the meteorological services reporting 4-8 degrees. Nevertheless, I am still getting on the temperatures here very well, strangely being clad most of the time wearing only 2 layers of top clothes with single layer jeans and shoes. I should be able to handle winter with not much problems. The only problem is that your hands do get only very cold after awhile when outdoors, especially when you are cycling, but gloves always help!

No one seems to wear slippers of sandals out here, unlike what I do everytime in Singapore, maybe I should actually dress less sloppily?

No it’s not an aftermath of a zombie vending machine raid, but it always seem to be the case here every weekend in school, particularly those staying within the college dorms. The college generally serves 3 meals a day- breakfast, lunch and supper (aka dinner) everyday, with the exception on Saturdays with only brunch served and lunch on Sundays. So this leaves our weekend dinners open which usually result in very interesting findings- It’s not uncommon to see 2 fully loaded adjacent vending machine selling drinks and sweets full and the one dispensing meals completely wiped out on weekends, so as I discover when passing by the college vending area on few occasions. It seems that this whole place runs off vending sandwiches on the weekends, otherwise it’s takeouts, microwaved meals or pizza.

Generally lets face it, not many people like to cook even if you do it will be most probably be worth while cooking for a group or so, which seem to be the case for myself. My group of about 5-6 Singaporeans friends will usually get together on weekends for a cookout where 7-9 pounds can easily feed 4-5 people for dinner.

In a typical bachelor pad setting, our cooking is not really what we call “restaurant standard”, but rather good enough for tasting eating. We tried cooking pasta with beef and meat sauce which turned out like a minced meat contraption with not much tomato. And there was one weekend where we had fried rice which was actually too wet, we ended up passing it off as claypot rice! and I don’t think I would want to talk about the chicken rice weekend!

Ingredients for dinner

Wet fried rice! (Nice try anyway)

Feeding time…

Cooking at home is not exactly that “cheap” either, though yes the material cost is low, but the time and effort going into actually preparing the food and actually cooking it muddles the justification of the cost (took about 1 hour for our first try). When you though that is it, then there’s the amount of grocery planning and shopping beforehand for the ingredients.

I kinda miss the ease of ready made-food anytime of the day back in Singapore. Not that I actually miss the food but rather the convenience of obtaining them, let be how ridiculously cheap our food is back home compared to here. Chinese food here is expensive, bout $12 SGD for a plate of Singapore fried rice, which is far more expensive than that you get in London as well (maybe due to fewer Chinese stores here).

In a typical English setting here, there are no hawker centers here, only restaurant and eateries which will set you back at least 7 pounds for any dinner. There are no diners here either. Nevertheless, with each passing week with new discoveries town, there are always few popular cheap spots to eat around town, such as pubfood (about 4 pounds for a burger, fries set with drink) or there’s always the sub of the day!

There are quite alot happening around college, chill out sessions, welcome parties, ice-breaker sessions, speed meeting sessions, performances, talks you name it. And that is not just limited to events here but around town as well. The freshers events are the highlight for this time of the year, with the seniors getting to know all the juniors as well. There is just plenty to go around, sometimes you do not know what you are signing yourself up for as well!

Getting social here is not very much like what we do at home. Pubs and drinking is a way of life here, as synonymous as a gathering in a hawker center or a coffee shop for starters. Wanna meet? Pub! Watch soccer? Pub! Moreover, clubbing here is more open in nature and have better atmosphere and mixes compared to that I know that the clubs back in Singapore, even by local DJs around town. The club culture back home is almost nothing compared to that here and I still have yet to experience the best clubs in the Country.

Few of my favorites regular show segments here will have to be the stand up comedy, Wolfson howler. It’s usually pure crude humor delivered in a way you least expect it, it makes you laugh without questioning much of of Morales anyway, a show worth catching on their regular tours round Cambridge and is usually a full house whenever there is a show.

Wolfson Howler

Club? Umm Night Dance!

Bwarr da hands!

With the weather getting colder now, things are still very much heating up not only on the fun side but the in classes as well- everything is starting to go full steam, but at least there is still time for games and play as well!

With some time to spare, let me talk about the engineering department along Trumpington street where all freshers will have to go through as a rite of passage here in the university of Cambridge before specializing in their various fields of chosen expertise here or out of the department at West Cambridge.

Built around 1875, this department is about 130 years old, but it still retains much of the old red bricked structure which is typical of the architecture of that time. Even walking through it, particularly some corridors does make you feel that you’ve gone back in time. Much of the old the layout of the building still largely intact, not to mention the old weather wooden doors and oak lecture room seats which are literally give you the sore bums ar some time of sitting. They even kept the building “trademark” smoke furnace smoke stack which can be seen sticking out of the engineering buildings despite it not being used for decades.

The interesting fact is that all these old parts goes hand-in-hand with the various improvements and modern additions seen all around- There are also many various enhancements made to the existing structure, such as modern ceilings, lighting and toilets. It’s quite unreal walking down an ancient corridor only to enter a bright tiled room with lots of modern facilities, typical a Frankenstein contraption of old and new. Moreover, the

The department from the library

Common lectures

The societies fair!

Being an old building, there are many instances of the old building which I always attend lectures in. Almost all lectures and talks are all conducted here for undergraduates- First year lectures are usually common and held in the larger lecture theaters where you will spend more of your senior years in small lecture rooms when you choose to specialize in the third year. The department is also a place for post grad research as well, with 5/5 start ratings for research and laboratories.

I am really liking the myriad of societies and groups available at university level, far more than what I thought SP had oftered was “large”, but it’s still a far cry from the type of CCAs offered in JCs. Signing up for track and field was a no-brainer for me, but sign-ups are usually in for competitive level, let be representing the college at university level. Since I am recovering from a leg injury, I guess I have to put that on hold until maybe next term where I get my fitness backup with training schedules of my own.

Robot soccer matches!

Let the match begin!

Slug fest!

I guess to anybody, to build a robot from virtually zero knowledge in 2 days was quite a bit of a feat. We were split into 12 teams which were formed during the ice-breaker dinner sessions on the first day of the prep course. I was rather niffy with building robots out of Lego, so I offered to design and build the robot based on the team’s requirements. In the end we settled for a single IR sensor with 2 pairs of touch and light sensors, all that’s left was programming which were delegated to the rest of the team of 6 to plan and code. Programming turned out to be rather more of a feat than we thought, but we did turn out with a working robot which actually looked rather cool.

The matches are hilarious, some team’s robots were just moving around blindly bumping into walls while some are just sitting stoned while the teams cheered on the “tortoises” to play soccer. We didn’t win in the end through the process of elimination where one team gets some small prizes, but I guess the new friendships made and the experience gained was more invaluable than anything.

Term will actually start next week, there are much to get around and registering with the engineering department next week. It will be busy!

There were no gate numbers printed on the board pass, so that needed little hunting on the screens to find yours upon entering the departure walk and duty free areas. The gate check was a little messy, especially those who were carrying laptops with them, I have 2 of them with me and they have to be individually scanned through the x-ray, to my dismay with lots of re-packing to do. My flight is on a A380 and I always particularly hate long haul flights, this 12 and a half hour one is no exception either.

Departure at Singapore Terminal 3

On the A380 to London!

The bus terminal

The journey to Cambridge
On the contrary, the flight on board the plane was quite smooth and slightly quieter than most planes I’ve flown before, it’s so much better than being on a 747 as well. The A380 does not have the typical drowning “airplane smell” which I hate. The food is great, can tell it’s prepared largely by Singapore chefs, not sure what food I will get if I were to fly from London to Singapore tough. Despite sleeping like 5 hours on the plane, man, was I still very tried after that flight. Surprisingly, I still managed to get that much sleep despite tossing and turning round much- the seat is just too small to be comfortable for a sound sleep, managed to catch the movies fast and furious 4 after takeoff and transformers the fallen on the flight before landing.

Back at Singapore before my flight at the SIA check-in, my parents did indicate that I may need some assistance from the airport in Heathrow. Considering that I was still recovering from a stiff ankle following a minor surgery from an injury. The SIA staff were rather helpful, they saw me out of the plane upon arrival and there was an Airport representative staff from SIA which walked me through the whole arrival hall and helped me at the baggage carousel (which weighed over like a helfy 20kg and was too heavy for my injury) glad there was help! Immigration was a breeze as well, with just a need to show my university letter and I am off to the arrival area with 2 hours to spare before my coach arriving timing.

Sat round the airport for an hour or so reading a book and got about chatting with a Hongkong family there before starting on a 15 minute underground walk with all my baggage from Heathrow T3 to the Central bus station. The bus arrived on time as expected and did not wait long before setting off, so it pays to be early or you can easily miss your bus. I did not sleep much on the bus, but did doze off sometime in the journey, but the country side views throughout some parts of the journey were rather nice. Along the highways, you can see nice rolling hills and large open fields. There are always cows and horses on those fields.

Contrary to what my dad always warned about highway truckers and driving in the UK, from my observation, the trucks on the motorway all drive slowly here (no speeding), not like what dad said, maybe he’s just paranoid for my safety. In fact, the highway here is almost like that in Singapore with the trailers. Most with speed limiters as well.

The National Express coach trip (service 787) is about 2 and a half hours from Heathrow, going in and out many airports, rail stations and towns along the way. Despite the rather loopy journey (which effectively almost doubled the traveling time), got to catch many interesting new scenes around town as well. My coach journey terminates at the Parker’s piece in Cambridge where I managed to flag a cab almost instantly to the college which is about 2km away. The cab fare was a 10 minute ride, costing 5.80 pounds. The next and final moment of my journey I saw myself standing right in front of the college flagpole. The stone path in front of the college are not exactly roller luggage friendly, but I am there!

The front of the college

The main building (porter’s lodge)

My accommodation block

The porter there brought me on a short introductory tour and gave me the college welcome pack as well as ran through the administrations required for the wolfson card, which is essentially the college contactless smart card. Got to meet many new faces, particularly my engineering buddies who were already on college few days before me. There are many Singaporeans and Malaysians studying in this college as well. Had lunch and dinner within the college grounds for the day which is really a great life saver having not to cook or prepare my meals, anyway I will see myself eating often in the college dining hall. I am just too lazy to cook! Oh yes, there’s free pizza form dominos for freshers as well!

It’s official!

My room, well always in a mess

Time for an update!

There much to unpack and organize myself around. Will be up exploring much of the town in the days to come. It should not be too different from what I last recall of it. As you can see, my room is kind of quite a mess. Had not slept at all since lunch though I did had some coffee then and been up till like 10pm London time (which is about 5am Singapore time here) since yesterday. I should be hitting the bed soon and maybe prepare breakfast myself as I might be too lazy to rise early enough to catch breakfast in the dining hall tomorrow morning.

More to come!

The F1 2009 SG GP

Niffy kangarooTV

At the pits

On top of the action, we were also issued these rather cool Kangaroo handheld TV sets which I recall only can be seen in the most hardcore of F1 fans abroad, it’s not really widely used here and it seemed like a novelty to be able to utilise it for the day. It’s like a mini-computer and receive signals via wi-fi. It is perfect if your grandstand seat is tucked away without a giant screen in sight- you can catch all the TV footage, commentary as well a in-car camera views from all the cars on the grid.

After the track action, we were given exclusive entry to the paddock area and were brought around by Shell’s Stuart Humm. Besides a tour of the garage and how the engineers work on the car, such as the tires (and the warmers), spoilers and stuff, we were introduced to various Shell V-power crew working there, such as Lisa Lilley (Shell Technology Manager) and her crew in the Shell brewery and testing lab. There, we got to check out and learn about Shell’s leading fuel research and analysis team for the Scuderia Ferrari.

In the brewery!

Warm tires

And Raikkonen’s ones too

There we were told of Shell’s very close relationship with the Ferrari team in Formula One to develop the highest performance Shell V-Power race fuels. Shell V-Power has been formulated by the Shell scientists who developed Ferrari’s Formula One race fuels. These learnings are used to develop Shell V-Power fuels for road cars, to help power and protect them worldwide.

The fuel used by the Scuderia F60 is formulated very much similar to that used for cars as Shell V-power, a translation from track to road, hence the term “Shell V-Power, Ferrari fuel for your car”. A dedicated team of Shell scientists use the Formula One environment as a laboratory, working on many factors that affect a car’s engine, then use these insights when formulating Shell V-Power fuels, helping to benefit drivers in many countries. Shell V-Power’s is also formulated with various unique cleaning agents and powerful cleaning Friction Modification Technology (FMT) designed to help increase an engine’s responsiveness, deliver more power and improve driving performance.

A view of the turn 1 grandstand

An aerial view

Action at the pit area

I did not manage to catch any of the drivers Fisichella or Kimi around, but the experience was quite an eye opener particularly all the action going on at the pits and considering that not anyone can have access to the paddock area. Glad that I was able to stay in Singapore long enough to witness this event before flying off to UK over the weekend.

Today is a good day! And a conincidence, the day my new Intuos4 arrived in the mail as well!

I brought mine off Amazon at $297 USD with a student discount. The non-academic version is retailing too at Amazon for about $320 USD which is roughly $20 bucks more, however what you get is rather similar. The move to prompt me to get this tablet abroad is very much the price factors we have here in Singapore. Distribution of the tablet here is strictly regulated by Wacom Asia pacific and the most you can get off the $599.99 retail price in store here is a dinky $20 ($579.99 after a good haggling at Sim lim square as confirmed). Wacom pride themselves as a tool provider for the creative industries, therefore the premium price for their products. And when things don’t look good the Asia pacific version of the Intuos 4 (unlike the US version) do not include a mouse at all!

I paid about $520 SGD for my unit (including GST as taxed by the ICA and shipping), which comes with the intuos 4 mouse. If it weren’t for the pricey Vpost shipping and GST, the unit would easily cost below $500 as the tablet itself costs $425 SGD with the mouse (at 1.43 USD/SGD conversion rate). If you were to get the equivalent in Singapore with a mouse, it will cost $668.90 SGD here, so that’s about $150 SGD in savings. Warranty issues? not quite as I’ve never ever had to send in any of my Wacom products for repair before. I guess even before I do, I would have already upgraded to the next version. Furthermore, I have heard from fellow artists who are still diligently using their Intuos 2 (serial port version) and they are all still working! Such great quality!

Ok enough on the talk, now lets get onto the tablet itself.

Size and packaging
The Intuos 4 in question here is the medium verison, which is a largely popular size for the functions and price point. The small version is not exactly small either, with it being only about 5 cm shorter on the width and has no OLED display which is not really value for money and not that small either. Based on the box pictures I see of the standard edition, it’s not much in any way different from the academic version. I was expecting the box to arrive in a plain corrugated cardboard box with no printing, looks like wacom decided not to discriminate on that and a full retail box is also provided for academic users including full software.

Black is the talk!

Neat packaging!

The tablet + mouse

The tablet buttons and wheel
The unit is clad in sleek black. The palm rest area is matte black plastic which is great for it’s purpose for a palm rest. The strip where the express keys are however clad in this glossy plastic seen typically on the back of iPhones as well, which is a magnet for finger prints. There are 8 express key buttons- 4 above and 4 below the touch wheel. The touch ring functions much like an iPod wheel and shortcut “quick jump” menu. The touch ring is programmable up to 4 levels, which are toggled in sequence by the center ring button and indicated by a 4 soft white LEDS beside the wheel itself. The feedback LED showing your pen contact, etc is now all integrated into the touch ring indicator LEDs itself. It stay moderately lit on standby and intensifies each time your pen makes contact on the tablet surface.

Removed from the intuos 4 is the scroll strip, which is only a vertical scrolling strip which not much ability in one orientation. The old intuos 3 touch strip is rather waxy as well, which makes scrolling seem rather unnatural. Glad wacom replaced them with the touch ring which also spots a more matte surface for tactile scrolling.

The true power of this wheel is the 4 levels it has. I used to dislike having to draw with pen in hand and manually pan/scroll my canvas with my mouse, not to mention rotating my canvas in Photoshop when working on pieces with a vertical touch strip which seems only good for Zoom and panning. The circular dial makes the canvas rotation more intuitive and given the additional levels, there are even more possibilities- all these simply allows you to use the tablet with much lesser mouse and keyboard input. Currently I have mine set on zoom (first level), brush size, scroll and canvas rotation all toggled instantly at a touch.

Being a right hander, I also never saw myself using the express keys on the right of the intuos 3. Glad wacom also moved the right buttons to only one side so my other free left hand can access all the buttons without having my drawing hand going both left and right to the buttons.

The OLED display
The real cool thing of the Intuos 4 is the OLED display which really made the unit look rather modern and space age as compared to the Intuos 3. The OLED display will dim when not in use and light up when touched. What custom keystrokes or functions you have programmed and named for each button in the wacom tablet properties utility will show up accordingly on the OLED display. Any predefined general functions can be represented by an icon in place of text. As said this is really just a cosmetic preference, or unless you are somebody who always changes your express key settings, have a hard time remembering them or have a tablet shared between many artists, the OLED screen is actually not a critical need. For me, the settings are more or less fixed for the programs I use for drawing so I usually get to the buttons over time and know their functions even without the need for the OLED screen.

The cool OLED screen

Wacom utilities setting

The pen nibs and stand

The input devices
The new pen is not compatible with the intuos 3 and vice-versa, given new hardware and doubling of the sensitivity levels from 1024 to 2048. The new pen is slightly shorter and all black to go with the new colour scheme. The tablet pen feel more like a typical gel-based writing pen now with the rubber grip firm and tight to the pen’s body. The rubber grip do not seem to suffer from flexing or “sponginess” which opens up whenever you press the pen’s rocker switch. Glad wacom fixed that as well. You still get the spring loaded eraser on the back which is handy for quick erasing without having to manually toggle your main brush in photoshop.

The mouse works like a regular 3 button wheel mouse with 2 extra programmable buttons. the movement of the mouse is relative to it’s current position and not absolute to a position on the tablet surface (like the tablet pen), though it’s possible to tweak it so on the wacom properties. The mouse is wireless and most importantly, battery-less which allows for it’s small compact notebook-mouse size. Personally I found it too small for my liking and use comfortably as well- I can literally cup and cover the whole mouse in my hand! Other than that, it makes a good spare mouse as my tablet also doubles as my mouse pad as well.

Testing it out
So what better way to test out the tablet than to make a quick 15 minute doodle of myself straight from the mind, say… in a creepy abandoned stadium at night? For my first intuos 4 piece as expected, much of the drawing and feel is very much similar to all previous versions of the intuos line and frankly no human can really tell the difference between 1024 and 2028 levels of sensitivity (even my wacom tablet PC has 512 levels of sensitivity and drawing on it gives you really no real difference in experience). All these are still numbers and specifications largely for marketing. Tilt and pressure works as expected and you will have no problems moving over from any previous intuos version with such a low learning curve required. The feedback of the default nip of the pen was bit too rough for my liking, good thing there are 3 different nib types you can swap for your preference- all conveniently located now hidden inside your tablet pen stand which is actually weighed at the base now.

With widescreen monitors being the norm now, all future wacom tablet feature a widescreen drawing surface, which is very much a welcome with respect to the aspect ratios of my previous tablet. Likewise, if you have a screen of a different aspect ratio, the wacom tablet properties allows you to scale the tablet drawing surface to the full size of your screen or cut off portion of your screen area to accommodate the difference within your tablet drawing area or if you have multiple monitors as well.

It takes a little while getting used to the wheel, having used to the strip for zoom and pan on my old tablet. I wondered why wacom removed the strip it would be good if it could have remained by the buttons, but I guess that will be too much of an input overkill. It’s not where I come to realize of my previous problem of always accidentally touching the scroll strip whenever my tablet is not in use beside my keyboard. I still get accidental swipe sometimes on the wheel, but the toggle switch now can act like a “hold switch” where the scroll function is disabled until you cycle the mode back to scroll again. At least that problem is solved.

I was able to get to speed rather quickly with all my usual styles and settings when doing digital line and colouring art on photoshop. It is not after using the tablet where you can notice the little simple nuances wacom had made to improve their product. A common problem which always plague users of the intuos 2 up to 3 is the lost of cable connection on the data cable exit from the tablet body- where it is bent or kinked from regular wear and tear. Many artists always recommend the “quick fix” by dissembling the tablet and stuffing the affected worn wires further into the tablet so the fresh wire sheath can take the new spot to be worn on the cable exit point. This problem is completely eliminated now with the use of a detachable (and replaceable) standard USB to mini USB cable similar to that we see on handphone sync USB cables. This now forms the connection link your tablet to your PC or Mac. The mini-USB inlet port on the tablet can be toggled for left and handed usage.

Software
When you buy Intuos 4 (standard or academic version), you’ll gain access to the Intuos 4 bundled software download program at no additional cost. You will get a CD key printed on the back of your driver CD which you can use access online, several valuable creative applications such as Autodesk SketchBook Express 2010, Photoshop Elements 7, Corel Painter Sketch Pad and extra photoshop add-ons such as wacom Brushes and 3.0 Nik Color Efex Proaccess. You will also get discounts and upgrade top-ups for various software on wacom’s privileges page. These are good for new users looking for programs to get started with, but for me I am happy with my dated version of Photoshop, well till I safe up enough to get an upgrade maybe.

Conclusion
Wacom had wowed me with the intuos 4 just as how they did with the intuos 3 years ago. With only the Cintiq the next best thing to beat. The intuos 4 is a class of it’s own and truly a professional drawing tablet with the looks and attitude to boot. This new tablet just simply makes my old tablet feels old and dated. Being the world renowned market leader in creative tools, you can’t go wrong with a wacom particularly an Intuos. If you are in the creative field, a designer, digital artist or an enthusiast looking for a professional tablet solution, you definitely can’t wrong with a one either.

Recommended!

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

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!

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.

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.

The interviewer then skimmed through my personal statement, impressed by the motion simulator I’ve built with my team in my polytechnic days, he asked me how it works, which I gladly explained using a sketch and some schematics I drew on the spot on an empty piece of paper between us- how it’s used for driving, for flight simulation, etc.

When done, the interviewer asked me how a plane flies. From here I came to realize that a bulk of the questions asked can depend largely on what your interests are and your statement, though such questions can also come randomly to anybody.

So I sat and thought a moment, I went about the need for the wings to generate enough lift or upthrust to counter the weight (W) of a plane through an ingenuous design of the wing which promotes a region of low pressure above the wing and a region of relatively higher pressure on the bottom of the wing. This is of course due to the differences in velocity the air particles will take to travel over the surface of the wing. The differences of the pressure creates a net resultant upward force, which translates to lift and causes a plane to fly. Thereafter I tied down the analogy to how a golf and cricket ball flies with the lift it creates by spinning as well, interesting way to expand on the question which could lead possibly anywhere thereafter.

Building on that, he told me that now I’ve got my plane in the air, how am I going to get the air moving fast enough for that to happen? I mentioned that it needed forward thrust from an engine which led to a question on how a plane engine works.

In that split second, at that moment the only thing I could think of was propeller planes, which lead me thinking of radial engines (typical in world war 2 planes and Harley Davidson motorcycles), so that means explaining how internal combustion piston engines work. That should be OK, but a propeller uses a “wing like” structure to produce trust which has an answer similar to the previous question as well, is that what the interviewer wanted? Despite all that which went though my mind at that instant, all I remembered saying was “Propeller engine?”

The interviewer smiled and told me the most favorite quote of the whole interview, while pointing to the plane sketch I have on the paper between us.

I simply went “huh?”. I was paused for a moment to process the new information, my mind was in a mess for that instant, then I calmed myself and then recalled that a jet engine is essentially a gas turbine engine. Then I recalled gas turbines running in helicopters, some formula boats, power stations as well as the M1 Abrams tank. I struggled to think of the components of the gas turbine which I knew I through general knowledge but could not remember it as that instant and the given interview pressure at that time.

Then calmly, I recalled a picture from memory of the engine of a Boeing 747 having a spinning turbo fan at the front of the engine, turbo fan equals air intake, which means a suction body to compress air- a compressor! So with a new stack of paper, I went on drawing an anatomy of a jet engine start from the front air compressor. A gas turbine is essentially a combustion engine, so I drew the combustion chamber after the compressor where the high pressure air and fuel mixture are ignited.

That was as far as I recalled. Then I fell back to my chair, stuck again knowing that there was a third and last part to it. Seeing that I was stuck, the interviewer hinted:

That lit the light bulb on my head- just like a piston engine which does work from the combustion stroke to push the piston down to spin the crankshaft, the gas turbine super-heated fuel needs to spin a shaft, how it does that is to run the superheated gases through another work turbine at the end which allows the shaft to do work (which in turns coupled to the intake turbine in a recurring process)! wowo!

I never formally studied a Jet engine in school, I was glad that went all well and I was on a roll- Thereafter we went on the applying (and deriving) the Newton Laws of motion on how it applies to our jet engine case where the exhaust gases produce thrust due to the action reaction pair (and transfer of momentum) between the plane and the surrounding air all with real life examples. Excellent!

Wrapping it up
Before we know it, “oh we are out of time” said the interviewer glancing at the room clock and turning back to the pile of sketched A4 papers between us (which I used to draw and illustrate the questions throughout the interview). Seeing that, I shrugged and started arranging the pile, remarking: “Mmmm maybe I should’ve… umm…. used less paper…”, then the interviewer laughingly said with a smile, “No, that was fine!”.

Time really passed very fast when you are having fun and I was surprised the interview lasted an actual 35-40 minutes while I thought only 15 has passed. The interviewer then asked about financial matters and my scholarship before opening questions from my side where he answered my queries regarding the annual solar eco-race for engineers, as well as the exchange program with MIT. In closing we shook hands again and the interviewer saw me out of the room before heading back in again.

Closing
The interview really turned out far better than what I thought it was to be, it was rather enjoyable as a matter of fact. In fact they were rather professional in keeping you cool and comfortable, it was a blast, so don’t worry about it. The interviewer really made me feel that Cambridge was a great fit for me and I am glad they saw it that way.

Looking back, I particularly like the way the interview is structured, particularly the general questions where anything under the sun related to your field can be asked, forcing you to think out of the box and within your comfort zone of what textbooks or what any dinky “ten-year series” can offer, which should be the case. Remember, the interview aims to test your “unlearnt knowledge”, so the best is to go in as yourself with an open mind, that is the best advice I can give when I come to realize after the interview. Each interview is of course unique to the applicant and will differ.

Hehheh I hope my college director of studies won’t go after me for sharing this interview here. So if you are reading this in preparations for yours, I hope this experience will provide you an eye opener on what to expect in yours.

All the best and have a great interview!

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!