11 May 2014
As I finished 3 papers, this week marks the end of my semester 2 at NTU, which means that the holiday have been started!
The week started with an exam on CM8001 Impact of Chemistry on Society, which is a Pass-Fail course, and I just targeted to pass the course without any high expectations. The exam consists of 2 parts: short answers and MCQs. The MCQs were 70-80% doable while the short answers, well, I just write what I know and turned out that it was still quite blank.
The second last of my exam was on CZ0001 Engineers and Society on Wednesday. Well, I put my most effort on this course and turned out on the exam every parts were filled and elaborated (as suggested by the lecturer: “Write as much as possible”). Although I wrote not much, compared to others who even asked for additional answer books. I hope that I get good grade on this course although I know that this course was quite scary and very competitive.
The final exam was on CZ1008 Engineering Mathematics on Thursday. This one was my first real open-book exam. Well, CZ1001 Discrete Mathematics allows a single double-sided A4 sheet of reference material (a.k.a. “cheat sheet”), but this time CZ1008 was open-book. I brought in all the lecture notes, tutorial questions and answers, PYPs, and of course, the “cheat sheet”of A-level mathematics I used when preparing for NTU & NUS UEEs. Although I was not quite used to this kind of open-book exam, which makes the small desk quite packed. Well, I can say that I done well on this final paper. This paper marks the end of my journey as first year student and marks the beginning of HOLIDAY!
What to do on holidays?
In short: games, movies, working, coding, traveling, and learning. First, I have installed quite a number of games, of illegal and legal sources, and some older games which I have not get an opportunity to play them. I was thinking of mainly playing Red Alert 3: Uprising and Portal 2. Next, I have some backlogs of movies that haven’t been watched. After that, I got an increase in part-time job slots, which was nice because usually at holidays, there were very few people inquire things. Then, as usual, I wanted to do some personal projects, whether it is a new one or continuing an existing one, well I haven’t decided what to do. Oh, I also wanted to continue my progress on competitive programming, either it is on TOKI Learning Center, uVA OJ, or Codeforces. Next, this June I and my family will be visiting my brother and travels around. Finally, I’ll be in the NTUBS team that will compete in Awaken Challenge 2014, which means that I need to learn more things in Buddhism. Besides that, I’ll be finishing Buddhism and Modern Psychology on Coursera soon and then I’m also eager to complete CS169.1x Software as a Service on edX.
On Thursday night, I completed a chapter of the campaign story of Red Alert 3: Uprising and then watched “The Matrix”. This “The Matrix” movie, in my opinion (and as I heard from other person), has some Buddhist values incorporated inside, like come-and-see (“[…] I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. “); non-self (“Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. […] There is no spoon.”); and the realization of the truth (free the mind from The Matrix)
On Friday, I tidied up my desk, returned books, got briefing on a paid research participation, and then worked part-time at my normal slot at LWN Library. This time the library was so empty, and I was like playing games almost all the time. When Dhika came, I accompanied him playing games (again). At night, I went to continue playing Red Alert 3: Uprising, but encountered a BSOD in the middle. Well, after recovery I went to watch “The Matrix Reloaded”.
On Saturday, after breakfast-laundry-room cleaning-lunch routine, I went for a nap and then watched Sherlock season 3 episode 3. Well, I did not understand why the case ended like that. But it was very cool and mysterious. At the night, I went to Grace’s room along with other friends to prepare for surprising Dita. After surprising Dita at around Canteen 2 area, we went to Hall 1 TV Lounge to do HTHT session until almost 3am.
On Sunday, I went to Buddhist Fellowship with some friends, where the speaker was Venerable Hasapanna talked about contentment: on why we should appreciate the things that we already have and not the things that we crave. After that, I, Benny, & Rizky went to Poh Ming Tse to collect books for NTUBS Free Distrubution. Later, we were joined by Alwyn, Chun Hee, and Zillion. We then went back to NTU by taxi because the books were just too heavy to carry if we were to travel by public transportation. Arriving in my room, I went straight for nap until dinner time. After that in the night, I continued on CS169.1x SaaS on edX.
Although it was already holiday, I felt that I’ll be quite “busy” next week as many of the days were filled with planned activities already. I hope that I can enjoy this holiday :)