Pre-semester 3

10 August 2014

This week is the last week of holiday at NTU. Although I had many free times, most of them are filled up quite well, while the rest are just “killed”. This week is also the last week of me having 4 part-time shifts on a week, at least until a few months ahead. Besides that, this week I’ve been having fun by going out to Adventure Cove, working on NTUBS not-secret-anymore Secret Project, and swimming with friends.

On Monday, I did part-time job at CITS at LWN Libary. To my surprise, this week, the CITS helpdesk is lacking of manpower and hence the counter here will close for the rest of the week. After finishing the job, I went back to my room doing nothing productive till the night.

On Tuesday, I did part-time job at CITS at SSLP for morning and evening shift. Since there was a 4-hour gap in the middle, I went back to my room for a nap, a good one. After going back to my room, I did nothing useful till the night.

On Wednesday, I went to Adventure Cove with Hartono, my roommate for my year 1. He got a pair of tickets from the games at Hall XI Night last semester. There I got a Starbucks card too :P We went to Sentosa by public transportation, and darn, it costs a lot for going to Sentosa Island via the monorail. Arriving at Adventure Cove, it was raining, but we’re okay since it is a water park. First of all, we rented a locker, changed clothes, and got into the first attraction, under heavy rain, the Adventure River, which circles almost the whole park, and it was quite lengthy. Next, we rode Spiral Washout and when we are about to ride Whirlpool Washout, suddenly all attractions are closed, since we heard a thunder. Well, time for lunch! The restaurant inside the park was quite far from the entrance. The foods are expensive! And worst of all, it is disappointing, since the food is not the same as shown in the picture and it tastes so-so for that high price. After lunch, we went to Big Bucket Waterhouse, and felt quite disappointed since it was designed for little kids and not us :P We went to ride Pipeline Plunge and Tidal Twister. They felt too short too for the long queue. We had little fun at Bluwater Bay, a wave pool, before going to Riptide Rocket, the nicest ride of the park: it was worth the long queue. Next, we rode Dueling Racer, which I think I’ve ever ride a similar ride at Sunway Lagoon. After this, we went to Rainbow Reef, but in the end only me enter the attraction since they require people who can swim, although always strapped to a life vest inside the “reef”. Here, I saw a lot of fish in the cold salty water, somehow I was quite afraid the fish attack me since they are a lot in numbers but their view was just amazing. Just after the Rainbow Reef, I splashed myself into one of diving pool of Splashworks and got warned by the lifeguard since I think that it was just a normal swimming pool. Turned out that this is a quite special pool with some obstacles like crossing the pool in a shaky rope. The best part is climbing a rope to ring a bell. At first I did not think I can do it, considering my heavy mass, but when I started to climb, I somehow managed to climb up and ring the bell. Achievement Unlocked! :D After this attraction, we went for shower, had a photo, and then exit the park. We had an early dinner at Food Republic at Vivo City before going back to NTU.

On Thursday, I had nothing to do, literally nothing. Since I got nothing to do, I started to search more details of URECA projects. I viewed 3 projects that may interest me: one is about text-to-speech technology, one is about doing something like Wolfram Alpha (maybe), and the other is about real-time collaboration application. Around 3pm, I met a Master student giving me more details about the text-to-speech project he’s working on, and if I take this project, I will learn so much about text-to-speech technology. At night, I continued improving Raun, which I laid out the current problems and tried to fix it, but still in progress, and end up I put documentation on most of the codes.

On Friday, I continued on Raun and went for part-time job at CITS at OSSAC counter 7, but the person at counter 6 did not come and hence I handled 2 counters for the shift. Believe me, it was super tiring as I barely had time for rest. After early dinner, I went for meeting professor at SCE, inquiring more details of his URECA project. The professor seemed quite old and surprisingly he started the discussion with some interview questions. I can say that I get his attention when I demonstrated Raun to him. He then demonstrated to me his project on real-time collaboration and then asked me to go back to watch his talk about this and decide if I wanted to join him in this URECA project or not. Then I spend the rest of the night by watching Pacific Rim and continuing The Big Bang Theory (now at the end of Season 3).

On Saturday, I had a meeting with Rizky and Stephanie, working on NTUBS not-secret-anymore Secret Project :P We actually finished the back-end of the project and now the only thing this project need is only content. The meeting lasted from 10am to 5pm, which was quite long but the time working on this were well spent as I had the feeling of “tapping” into the project and code my part. At night, after catching up with The Legend of Korra, I watched Gravity. It was a nice thriller movie in which everything goes wrong until the climax.

On Sunday, I went to Buddhist Fellowship Sunday Service where Dr Ang Beng Choo had a talk about “A Life Too Long”, which is more about sharing about what to do in life, especially for retired senior citizens whom felt life as so boring. She also shared about her experience in counseling those who failed to commit suicide. Here, I met Felecia and Edison, who accompanied me until Boon Lay. I went back and had some rest before going out for swimming with Eka, KP, DE, and Teheri. I almost reached the goal of 2000m when we decided go out from the pool, had a shower, and went for dinner with juniors at Canteen 2. Here, finally I met some new juniors from my hometown.

This week is the last week of holiday at NTU and many things had happened. Next week, the academic year will kickstart with a Welcome Week by NTUSU where NTUBS joined and I’ll be volunteering at their booth. Besides that, next week NTUBS will have a Welcome Tea, which is organized by CNS Committees. Hope that next week will go well. :)