Buddhist Fellowship

VI

• Journal

22 September 2013

This week is the 6th academic week in NTU. Overall, this week was relaxing yet tiring.

On Monday, everything went like schedule except after the class we hung out for a while at LWN Library. The next evening, our school club had a subcommittee recruitment day. I applied for IT Officer (first choice) and Special Project Specialist (2nd choice). The interview session was short and straightforward, and that day seemed it was uncrowded.

On Wednesday, we got lab session for CZ1004 (Great Ideas in Computing) again, which was the last compulsory lab session for the course. When I worked part-time, it was very uncrowded as I can use the “free-time” to revise CZ1002 (Introduction to Computing System) course which will held a quiz the next day; but because I had badly very much “free-time”, I revised for HE9091 (Principle of Economics), which I was still confused if I had to make it S/U course or not. After work, I visited the library to return back the book about Human-Computer Interaction and then find a book about web design and checked out one book called “Designing Web Interfaces”. Hope I can read through all of it.

I’m quite busy on Thursday. After the morning lectures, I had a group meeting (and lunch) of the HW0110 (Effective Communication) course. We agreed hat we should meet again next Monday discussing the assignment with preparations such as the points we wanted to put in the report. After that, we got tutorial class, quiz, and lectures. The CZ1002 quiz consists of 2 MCQs, 2 T/F questions, and 4 short-answers. Overall, it was easy but I’m not too sure about the T/F questions.

Friday was fun and stressful. The lab session of CZ1005 (Digital logic) was fun, I’m excited about ‘programming’ the logic design from a computer software then run it at a board. After I had my lunch, I got a group meeting on CZ1004 course, this meeting was quite short but crucial as we come upon the problem that our topic is too vast, and after we ask for advice from our tutor, he also think so. Then we decided to pick one of the topic under Human-Computer Interaction and focus on it. We happened to ‘chop’ the tutorial room and use it for another hour just for finding the suitable topic. We then decided to think of it and suggest a topic to decide on next Monday. I was quite stressful about finding new idea. To relive it, I then ate Matcha McFlurry from McDonald’s, it was a nicely flavored green tea ice cream which I found too sweet to be green tea. At the evening, I got a Dhamma Class II held by NTUBS. The speaker talked about Buddhist practices and what was the steps to be a good Buddhist. After the event, the committee had a mooncake-eating event. Well, it was nice to eat mooncake under a full-moon.

On Saturday, my relatives visited me and after some time, they departed. I then did my part on HW0110, CZ1004, and then finished my CZ1003 (Introduction to Computational Thinking) assignment.

On Sunday, we went to Buddhist Fellowship (West Centrer). There Ven. Rathanasara gave a Dhamma Talk about how to dilute bad karma: by doing many good things, the past-bad actions may not be much affecting us in the future. After the lunch, I went to Fairprice at Jurong Point to buy some goods and then went to hair salon to have my hair cut at Hi Salon at Boon Lay MRT Station for just $3.9. This is the first time I had a hair cut outside Medan, to be exact, I had my hair cut almost all the time at the same barber shop in Medan. In the evening, we went swimming and had dinner at Canteen 1.

IV

• Journal

8 September 2013

This year’s National Science Olympiad (OSN) was held on this week, too. As always, I’m interested in monitoring the event of OSN in Informatics. It was heart-beating to monitor the public scoreboard of my juniors (and my supervisees). I somewhat could not concentrate on the lectures while I see the scoreboard. I just want them to get a medal and go to the training camp (Pelatnas). At last, Chalvin (from my province, different school; also joined OSN last year but did not get a medal) got a bronze medal; Febrian and Agus (my supervisee) got a bronze medal, Alva (friend of my supervisee who like to communicate with me) got a silver medal; William (my supervisee) did not get a medal; Andi (from my province, different school) did not get any medal, but I’m sure that his score almost made it to get a medal.

This week we got our first meeting in CZ1004: Great Ideas in Computing team (FS2 Team 2) at the double-screen monitor PC at Lee Wee Nam Library on Friday afternoon before the tutorial class, it was quite a short meeting but we brainstormed some ideas and shared the workload of the tasks.

NTU Buddhist Society on Friday evening held its Investiture, the ceremony of passing the positions from the 30th committees to the newly elected 31th committees. That day serves as my first day on duty as a NTUBS Resource Subcom as I helped bringing stuffs to NTUBS cabinet at Nanyang House.

This week marks my laptop’s 4th anniversary, which was bought in 4 September 2009. That time, the laptop, Acer Aspire 4810T, was quite cheap with mid-high specs: 320GB HDD, LED display, and 2GB RAM; what I did not know is, the processor is quite slow so it can conserve battery power more. The battery-saving mode was splendid, I ever run into using battery only for around 8 hours. Over years, the battery condition was still good too: it can still be used for 5 hours, with wi-fi.

On Saturday, I went to Comex at Singapore Expo (very far from NTU) to buy a new laptop, which will replace my current laptop. This laptop is Asus S46CB which features high-end specifications with reasonable price and it got ‘Ultrabook’ label. But I’ve tested the battery, the capacity is just around 2 hours. I need to adapt to this new environment and moves the data from the old one to the new one quickly. By the way, this post is the first post written at the new laptop.

On Thursday, I attended the NTU Student Union Recruitment Drive interview. I did quite bad at the interview for the design team as I couldn’t answer most of the questions asked and hey, for the logistics team interview, I did well; the results will be posted next Monday. Hope that I can quickly secure a hall point of 5 quickly. On Sunday, we went to Buddhist Fellowship to attend the Sunday service and went shopping at Fairprice, Jurong Point. Overall, this week is quite tiring but still fun, may the spirit of first week still burns!

3

• Journal

1 September 2013

This week is quite normal already, there were less and less CCA activities. I finally can come back to my hall room earlier.

The sad news is one of my friends, Marcellino, failed the medical check-up because he is diagnosed with tuberculosis and needed to go back to Medan to cure the disease, and can be admitted back to NTU after the disease is cured. Hence, he must wait until the next academic year to be admitted back to NTU. We celebrated the farewell party on Tuesday at Block 54 TV Lounge around 11pm.

Thursday was union day. On this day, some classes are cancelled because of the event. Union day is the day to cast our vote to elect our school club’s main committees. This day too, I met my academic mentor, Dr Li Mo, at his office. Our meeting was very short as it was just introducing myself and he get to know me a little bit. At evening, the make-up class for the union day was held. It was my first lecture at evening.

On Friday, many events happened. First, I almost late to attend the lecture at 0930 because of me doing laundry. Second, SCE held a student-mentor lunch at Nanyang Auditorium to gather all the mentors and students in which my mentor did not attend. Third, international students are to collect their student pass of which I collect around 1.30 pm. Lastly, at the evening, I attend NTU Buddhist Society Annual General Meeting which results in a new management committee. Actually, at the time of AGM, I also wanted to attend NTU Open Source Society Welcome Tea, but it was impossible to attend 2 events at the same time.

On Saturday, PINTU held a recreational game called T-SPRAY (Traditional Sports Day) 2013 which commemorates the 68th anniversary of Indonesia’s independence day. We also played modern games like Futsal and Captain’s Ball. The event was fun but it made me got tanned again.

On Sunday, I went to Buddhist Fellowship. This time, we got on time to attend the Sunday Service from the beginning. The dhamma talk is about happiness of giving, helping others, and unconditional love. At the evening, I went swimming and ate dinner at Canteen 1 of which I seen Dr Li Fang, lecturer of CZ1002, was there too but I was unsure so I didn’t greet her.