Just The Wei I Am

Haiz, I haven't blogged (you know, it's really funny that Blogger's Spellchecker thinks 'blogged' is a speeling error) for 3 weeks liao. So lethargic to blog am I that I have even tagged on my own tagboard in lieu of a proper blog. That seemed so improper that I decided that today, I shall return to blog-land.

Anyway, the past few weeks have just slipped past. I still haven't managed to steward my time properly and I'm still living each day as it comes. As a result, I now have this ridiculous amount of readings to read, webcasts to watch, projects to think about, presentations to prepare, textbooks to buy, articles to find/download/zap, ... you get the idea. That's just schoolwork, I shall not bother to list the pending To-Do's in the other domains of my life. Argh, Modern Life, argh!

I bought a new video card!! An ATI Radeon 9600XT. Quite a steal at $267. It's one of those Taiwanese no-frills card - no manual, no bundled games, just the card and the drivers. Actually, I was planning to get a 9600Pro with a budget of <$250, knowing that with the release of 9600XT, prices of the Pro should have dropped. But when I saw the XT going for just $17 above my budget for the Pro, what's going to stop me from getting that instead? Good stuff! The good/bad news is that now that I have a new DX9 card (whereas my previous one is a FireGL2 - an OpenGL only card), I can play all the games I couldn't play before! Swiftly, I installed GTA3, WC3+Frozen Throne, Raven Shield... This sudden ability to play games at maximum graphics settings have led to many a late night. Hmmm.... self-control, self-control.

Robert and I finally got down to praying and planning for what we want to do in the Arts ministry (the work of Christians in the Faculty of Arts/Social Sciences, not a department studying artwork. LOL). We worshipped God, learnt from the Bible, prayed and got down to planning. We also shared about our struggles up to this point. The whole thing was supposed to have been put in motion just before term started, but independently we both experienced personal struggles. I never knew till he shared. I'm glad that at this point, we have overcome somewhat and are moving on. Hee, I noticed he changed his MSN nick to "There's Anointing In the Air!" .. =)

Haha, mine is "If nothing sticks to Teflon, how does Teflon stick to the pan?" Rather telling of our personalities, huh?

Opera's nice and cool ... but now I have a gripe to make - it screws up the display of my blog! hahaha...

Finally managed to install Lord of the Ring:Return of the King last night, after having had to exchange it twice cos the discs had problems....

It's quite an excellent game and it kept me awake the whole night! I shall be brief... The first time I started the game, it already wowed me with its cinematics (taken from the movies, some on-the-fly renders for new scenes also) and more specifically, the fact that they threw me into the think of the action at Helm's Deep straightaway, without going through the usual menu first. Actually it left me in doubt whether that such menu existed anyway. (it does) So the way the game started was a nice surprise.

The graphics are stunning, and I can't run them at max settings! But it looks good enough ... Gameplay is also good, standard action arcade style. Haha, Kim Chun couldn't get the hang of the keyboard/mouse combo controls. It's clear he seldom plays FPS's... :P

Playing for hours on end, though, left me with a really painful left wrist. Imagine getting RSI from playing a game ....

My EL3275 Psycholinguistics group did our tutorial presentation on Pinker and Ullman (2002) The past and future of the past tense today. Wah, it's 10% of the final grade so it isn't really that unimportant. Think we really worked hard for it, going to the library and reading and cramming our brains with chim chim stuff ...

Anyway, truth be told, I was quite disappointed. Honestly, I don't think my groupmates were very well-prepared for the presentation. Apparently, they had not decided who to present which section, until right before the presentation. How then can they be well-prepared for their parts? I had already volunteered to present the hardest part (on Connectionism). So, in the end, a lot of the presentation seemed like they were reading off the slides.

I can't and I'm not faulting my groupmates. They have obviously done their work. I guess I'm just disappointed because we were not as good as we could possibly have been. My perfectionist streak there ... So do take note that I am not complaining!

Anyway things turned out fine (though not as fine as my perfectionism hoped for hahaha). Dr Tomasina was visibly impressed, especially by my section. I don't mean to brag (or maybe I do! haha). But it is quite satisfying and encouraging when people affirm you for good work done. She had rather good comments for our presentation on the whole too. She also seemed to suggest that it was good that we went beyond the call of duty by following up on the references in the assigned reading. She told the other groups that "Of course you don't have to, but it's good ..." ... Heeheehee, think we 'spoilt market' liao ...

Happy Ending.

Well, the day started with good news. I had spent the night at KC's room and upon returning to my room, I checked my mail and found an email from Dr Johan (Understanding Irony) in my inbox. It was the comments for last week's Irony Workshop presentation. Strange, I thought, how come he does email so early in the morning? Anyway, it didn't matter and I opened the document. His comments were rather critical and sharp in a constructive way, and I found myself thinking "Oh ya, that's true..." to a few of the things he said. *drum roll* The best part, though, was when I reached the bottom and found that I got an A- ! Seemed like he liked my organised and systematic analysis of the text. I have EL3262 Pragmatics and Dr Benny Lee to thank for this type of dont-care-too-much-about-style-just-analyse-the-text style. Always good to start the day finding out you got a nice grade.

Later, we had a test for EL2162 Historical Variation in English. That was the low point of the day. I found the questions difficult, and the time too little. As it was, I submitted my paper with a few questions left blank. Hmmm, perhaps I should have spent more time studying for this test. The fact that it was open-book seemed to have made me complacent. I realised that although it was reassuring to have open-book tests, having to refer to notes slows one down. That must be why I found the time to be too little.