30 December 2014
Finally, the final post in 2014. This post is to review what’s going on during the whole year.
2014 kicked off with me staying in Medan, coding Raun & c4, and catching up with my friends. After that, I went back to Singapore and joined my very first Dharma Camp which was very tiring (and I had some confessions to make later on). The academic week started with me adding EE8087 Living with Mathematics to my schedule, joining some birthday celebrations, and NTUBS spring cleaning. The next week, I was very free, joining lots of events and had my disappointment on CNS 2014 recruitment drive.
And then there was Chinese New Year, in which I came back to my hometown and did catch up again with my friends. By the end of the week, I was informed that my initial goal was successful :) I had a lot of free times on the following week, but I felt quite tired already. The week after that was Buddhism Awareness Week 2014, and it was super tiring (and I started the #100happydays challenge). Week 6 was spent in various events including CEC Hackathon and NTUBS Anniversary Night.
March started with e-learning week where I went out to pay application fee of USA visa, our BU8201 Business Finance group presented in the tutorial, “rewrite”-ing Raun, watched ICN 2014 and NTU CAC Choir Concert. The recess week was barely a recess week since I went out lots of times: to US embassy, to library (researching on Poker), to Chinatown meeting someone, and to NTUBS Secret Project meeting, to Westgate (at Jurong East), and to PMT & Jem (CNS Outing). On week 8, I joined some interesting event and got offered a paid project. On week 9, I’ve started to be busier by having a “job” and started a new MOOC (Buddhism and Modern Psychology). On week 10, I’ve presented on EE8087 Living with Mathematics group project, joined Greenfest 2014, donated blood for the fist time, and joined first aid workshop, joined Earth Hour 2014, and went far to Manjusri Secondary School for Sunday Service.
On week 11, there was BU8201 Business Finance quiz, April Fools’ Day, and lots of goodie bags were received. Week 12 were spent on playing games, coding, and starting to do the PYPs (it’s true that I had a damn lot of free time during this semester). On week 13, I was revising, joined some birthday celebrations, had Awaken Challenge 2014 meeting, did coding on Raun and on competitive programming, and had my first exam.
May started with the Star Wars day and I had 3 exams that week and other 3 were on the following week. I started the long holiday with writing a piece on the meaning of life (continuing the tradition to post an essay every Vesak). That week too, I joined a temple tour on Vesak Day, changed my phone to Nokia Lumia 1020, went to Foo Hai Chan monastery (for CNS matter), started to play Portal 2, and did some coding. The following week, I joined a boot camp, continued in preparation for Awaken Challenge trial quiz, and joined a NTUBS “secret” project meeting. By the way, I published my writing for my MOOC mid-term and final assignment. And May ended with me having lots of free time: procrastinating, working, playing games, watching movies, and swimming.
June 2014 was a great month: I and my family went to USA and Canada to visit my brother and we together traveled around there. We visited Toronto, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York City, Boston, Portland (Maine), Albany (NY), Montreal, and Ottawa. After that, we left for Singapore and I joined Awaken Challenge 2014 in which our team won; and accompanied my sister in watching 2NE1 concert.
July 2014 started with me repairing my new phone, settling CNS logistic stuffs, and playing games. On the following week, there was CNS trial camp and it was tiring. After that, the climax week was one week before CNS where everything seems to be very messy and we were very busy fixing it. And July ended with me moving room from Hall 11 to Hall 4 by foot and there was the real CNS camp itself in which I had 4-hour sleep for 4 nights (since Day 0).
On August 2014, it started with me having fun for a while by killing times, going out to Adventure Cove with HW, having NTUBS Website meeting, and swimming. Week 1 started to be a tiring one as there was this NTUSU Welcome Week which ended with NTUBS Welcome Tea (in which the CNS Committees are in charge). On week 2, I had NTUBS committee interview, started URECA, and ended the week with Medan Gathering 2014 and me almost lost my room (or maybe thinking too far). August ended with NTUBS AGM in which I succeeded becoming the 32nd Resource Director, started the ACM-ICPC training on Saturdays, and had NTUBS Resource 31st Committee outing.
September 2014 was a busy month. It started when I joined some competition with Alwyn, Filbert, and Leonard Tanoto to write an executive summary & a presentation about a sustainability challenge in which we chiong very crazily. On the other hand, I & my friends started to join some online competitive programming contests for the training. Besides that, I had meetings on HW0210 Technical Communication and NTUBS Main Committee. The workload became lighter for a moment after that. On Week 6, I had to do the NTUBS Dharma Camp 2015 Recruitment Drive, meetings on URECA project, the Saturday were well spent on competitive programming, while the Sunday were spent on spiritual activity (Buddhist Fellowship Sunday Service and musical about gratitude towards parents organized by Tzu Chi). Week 7 were e-learning week which I spent to do assignments, renew my passport at Indonesia embassy, have HW0210 Technical Communication meeting & experiment, do URECA tasks, and join NTUC Income Race On 2014.
Recess week started with me running away from the reality of lots of deadlines and assignments to NTUBS Management Retreat which I finally had 8-hour sleep again. After that, the week were well spent on URECA meeting, assignments, and spring cleaning. On Week 8, it was packed with a holiday (in which I did my assignments and had some free time), my birthday, NTUBS stuffs (Dharma Camp and Committee Day), and ICPC training. On Week 9, the workload become crazier, there were HW0210 Technical Communication report & abstract, CZ2002 Object Oriented Design and Programming big assignment, CZ2004 Human Computer Interaction Hi-Fi Prototype, URECA project; also mixed with a blood donation, Harcharan Singh Intra-School Recreational Games on Uno Stacko, and ICPC training. On week 10, I passed through the deadlines well, helped with NTUBS Committee Day, and did URECA project and CZ2002 assignment. October ended with me having another runaway to ACM-ICPC Asia-Kuala Lumpur Regional Contest 2014.
November was started by another busy weeks that ended the semester. I started a side-project called “Code!” for collaborative coding, had some meetings on URECA project and HW0210 presentation, and finished the CZ2002 big project. Mid-November were spent on ACM-ICPC Asia-Bangkok Regional Contest 2014, in which a team from our university won the contest. After that, it was revision week which started with me falling sick and kicked off the first exam for the semester.
December started by a week full of exams: 1 exam each day for 5 days, which was very tiring in the end but worth it. I did a writing on my default search engine. My holiday started with me moving room to my official room and attended a workshop on Web Science and Data Analytic Summer School 2014 at NUS School of Computing. I went back home and had lots of free time now, spent on my side projects, games, readings, and TV series. The following week, I had the same activities but towards the end, my family & me went to Samosir Island. After that, I went back to reality (of having same unproductive activities again + catching up with Golfin) and ended the year writing this review.
After reviewing the year, I had to say that during my year 1 semester 2, I was an EXTREMELY FREE person, meaning that I had nothing to do and hence can join almost ANY activities when being asked to join. Contrasting to my year 2 semester 1, I was so busy that I needed to skip some blog writing time and cut some of my sleeping times.
That’s 2014
What an amazing year where lots of thing happened.
Can’t wait for more fruitful 2015
:)
BONUS
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. 
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,700 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.