第三届新加坡福建文化节——福建人办学教育展 站岗 第一天

和妹妹一起报名成为了第三届新加坡福建文化节的展览中的exhibition seater，就是所谓的哨兵吧。。今年的主题是“阮的学堂——新加坡福建人办学教育展”，主要是解说从展示十九世纪末开始，由中国南来的福建先祖们如何骈手胝足办好教育，颇能学到东西的。工作范围是负责管理整个场地，售卖会馆的丛书以及一些行政的东西。半天下来并没有想象中繁琐的感觉，也就是管书记账比较需要用心罢了。

（从左到右）《南海明珠天福宫》，《阮这世人》、《头路》、《波靖南溟》、《Guardian of the South Seas》

和今天的义工聊了一下，知道他们都是初为人父母的父母亲们，来这工作的原因不外有他：为孩子以后报名福建会馆属下的学校铺好康庄大道。这是因为学校在考虑学生入学资格的时候，会把父母为学校/会馆的付出贡献也考虑在内。因此，我看到很多小孩还五六岁就已经替会馆当义工的父母，还有特地请假，父亲母亲轮流请假做义工的例子。

可怜天下父母心啊。

突然觉得，如果换成是我，我会怎么做？我想，站在孩子的角度，应该是希望爸爸妈妈有多一点时间陪陪他们吧。。与其把时间累积成一张孩子们直通好学校的通行证，不如把时间还给孩子，多多陪陪他们，在他们的童年留下美好的记忆，这才是一个好的投资吧，不是吗？孩子长大后，会记得爸爸妈妈送过他们去哪间学校多些，抑或是爸爸妈妈陪伴他们一起成长、玩耍、学习的种种片段多些？答案不言而喻。

Another Interview

I got another interview today. Strangely enough, it was from a recruitment agent company where I didn't ask for their help.

What I am interested is the post called Radiation Physicist, in a non-disclosed hospital. With the utter searching power of Google I found it is Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, a new hospital in North Singapore. Going through the interview is not a easy process though; you need to wait at the entrance, fill in a form, let them photocopy your IC and wait for a certain room to be cleared so that you can have interview in that particular room. Due to the last but not least step, I was stuck at there for about...30 minutes? And the interview itself barely lasted for 10 minutes from what I recalled.

Sad, the outcome is that the hospital needs a more experienced person, and it is not on their requirements on the job post at all. A great, great sad panda indeed.

徐佳莹《极限》专辑小评析

会注意到徐佳莹，不是因为星光大道。没错，我没看过星光，所以不太跟得上潮流，呵呵。。不知是哪一天，在电台上听到《身骑白马》，顿时惊艳住了。天啊，这是谁？没听过的歌声，清清脆脆的，加上混搭歌仔戏，对我来说，已经构成了寻觅这把好声音的理由。

这里介绍徐佳莹lala的《极限》。

专辑取名为《极限》，是对自己的能力质疑，也是为自己未来设了一个突破口。

这段时间里，徐佳莹的生活产生极大的冲撞，学习独立、创作枯竭，训练自己，她被这三个人生重要课题强悍霸道地困住了。突然之间有种『到不了、构不着』的焦急和失序感，她开始质疑：「好一阵子以来，得了一种病叫做『否定自己』，说『我不够好』，到底是对外的谦虚，还是根本不相信自己?」面临无法解决的难题，想放弃却又不甘心。工作、生活、创作，整个世界像在她的周围融解、剥落。「我的极限，是不是真的就到这里?」

和我当下的处境蛮像的，有时候会否定自己的能力，也会怀疑自己是庸人自扰，抑或是能力摆不上架？

曲目共10首，比起上张同名专辑，lala的创作日臻成熟，对于歌曲的驾驭也驾轻就熟了。印象最深刻的，当数《LOVE》和《时间大师》。

《LOVE》

巧合的是，同时间推出专辑的还有单飞推出专辑的Hebe田馥甄，其中也是有一首《LOVE?》。侧重点不同，一则轻巧明快，一则简单俐落。个人还是比较喜欢lala这首。第一感觉就是这首歌有groove，律动感很强，不禁想一起哼唱。再来lala的唱功发挥得淋漓尽致，每个转音、低吟、高唱都能做到运转如意。歌词很简单，但是听起来很舒服、很有在旋律中的感觉。

《时间大师》

这首歌点出了人们对于时间的无法捉摸和无可奈何。时间的无情推进，人们的后悔遗憾，有着一种冲突和矛盾的情结。把时间比喻成大师，不仅显出时间对于人们的重要性，也点出时间也能像充满超能力的大师一样，把人们玩弄于鼓掌中。从这段歌词：

喔喔　快一點　慢一點
人生的跑馬燈上有何差別
喔喔　早一點　晚一點
都無法改變時間大師的嘴臉

就能知道，人们的算计、预测、计划等等，都是要时间来实现、完成和沉淀的。

除了这两首歌，其它的歌也有可听之处，比如《绿洲》与《失落沙洲》有异曲同工之妙，《惧高症》的歌词有画面感，也有不同的解读方式。。。

期待下张专辑！:)

Upgrading...

Sometimes I wondered whether I am a spendthrift in my deepest soul or anything; I just plunged into buying spree when I feel urged to do so. Luckily it only happened few times, phew~

Back to the story, I ordered two hard drives on eBay, one internal and one external.

Internal hard disk:

Seagate Momentus XT

Seagate Momentus XT, a hybrid drive which claims to combine both the advantages of traditional hard drive (HD) and solid state drive (SSD). HD is cheap and large yet slower than SSD; SSD is much faster thanks to its non-moving mechanism but it suffers from a high price tag. I ordered a 500GB one, hopefully it will satisfy my need (haha!) and its 7200RPM won't affect my battery life much.

External hard disk:

Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB

Western Digital. No frill. I ordered a 1 TB one, serving as Time Machine for my mac and back up data.

Ya these two little drives cost me around SGD $400. A pity that Amazon doesn't accept my order...they are cheaper up there.

I will probably post my first brave venture to open up my 1 year MBP later once I get my packages. :)

My initial impression on Mac OS X Lion (10.7)

Yes, it is a big "Meh" from the lion himself.

Let's see what's on the Apple website on the sneak peak of the newest family feline members. A big fierce lion, going to be unleashed at anytime and eat your face alive, right? Read on and you'll realize this lion is a bit lack of...meat? (No pun intended).

First, the tag line: "The power of Mac OS X. The magic of iPad." Meh. It is just analogous to "The sweetness of sugar, the hardness of diamond" or something. Totally meaningless.

Now we look at the features.

1. Mac App Store. Although it may help the users to find out many awesome applications on the Mac, and help the developers to sell their apps, I am a bit skeptical of the walled garden approach on Mac. Yes, it doesn't limit the installation of the applications to the app store itself, and we still have the freedom and capability to find our sources such as on the developers' websites or torrent sites. However it may kill many interesting ideas of indie developers, and I am scared of Apple: They are not friendly to the developers sometimes. What if App store becomes the exclusive way to install applications on Mac in the future iterations of OS X? It spell doom, many will leave.
2. Launchpad. "The Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps - iPad style". It is a purely eye candy, and serves as a way to lure those iPhone/iPad users to Mac. Dock is there to launch app, an application stack is on dock, Spotlight is there as well. I believe that they serve well to launch the applications you want more faster than looking at a huge grid of icons and trying to find out what you want at the first place. Not to mention there are more third party softwares such as Quicksilver (my fav!), Google Quick Search Box and Alfred etc.
3. Full-Screen Apps. No comment on this. Seems an extra feature than an essential one.
4. Mission Control. It combines Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard, and full-screen apps to give you a bird-eye view on your desktop. Sounds like an upgrade to Exposé, I like it.

Hopefully in the coming WWDC we can see more faces of Lion, and Apple addresses to many existing issues on OS X itself, such as the different windows style of applications (iTunes? iPhoto? Pages?), Finder (I usually use Terminal, Quicksilver and DTerm to manipulate files more frequently lol) and the bundled apps (Mail+iCal+Address Book, iDVD).

I converted to Mac one year ago and so far I love the experience in using it, though I miss the days of using Linux...you know, you are able to do what things you want on your own PC.

Interviewssss

I attended one of the most "rigorous" interviews in my life.

Bloomberg.

That being said, it doesn't mean its interview is worst, lengthy, torturing or something worse. It is just something that I am exposed first time in my life.

As a physics graduate, living in academia, talking nonsense (which may include Physics itself) with fellows, speak to the profs as if they were your old grandpa/granny staying in neighborhood are the norm lifestyle for me. It is disturbing...when you find out that there are worlds outside which require your nimble tongue, quick action and ability to work as a team. Yes, the last item is the most lacking part in my university education in my opinion.

Well back to the topic, I got two interviews this week, one from HSA (Health Science Authority) and one from Bloomberg. The HSA one is mostly "Meh", as I found out it is not as interesting as I have imagined. My naive thought is that: "Medical Device? Physics degree is spotted in the requirement? Wow!"

It is not true.

Back to Bloomberg, I was literally stunned when attending the recruitment event. "2011 Financial Product Sales & Analytics Program", sounds awesome, doesn't it? 21 candidates were there. Wow. Apart from one life science and physics (that's me!) graduates, all of them are business/economics/finance/financial mathematics graduate, among which has people working in Google, Stockholm etc...Big pressure, even bigger when I am in Physics Department.

There are three sessions, the first is the host introduces Bloomberg and the job itself, such as career paths and responsibilities. Standard stuff. The second is self-introduction. I made some mistakes here by not showing my background and multilingual abilities, showing my weakness (not familiar with financial product) etc.

The most notable one is the third part where we are divided into three groups where we are given a scenario to solve as a team. It is a great chance and opportunity for the team leaders to observe how everyone performs and how they tackle the problem. For instance there is leader, adviser, analyst and so and so forth. I think I mentioned one quite important point, saying the cultural background of the particular client. Well at least I spoke. ;)

Conclusion? Quite an eye-opener :)

Revive....

I am trying to revive this blog because I'm too bored.

A photo ^^

^^

Good News~~

Two pieces of good news happened on me yesterday~

The first one is that RA positions under Prof Feng group are ready to be taken :) Chin Chean, Jing Qiang and I need to discuss and find other options before we agree though...

The second one is that there is a research internship program is hosted by University of Tokyo in this vacation! Airfare and accommodation is included, a freakin' good deal to me...Gogogo!

Terrible Sick

I was so terribly sick on Monday that I can't control my body, my body and hands kept shaking...Feeling cold and fever at the same time, I barely pulled myself through the lecture at 8pm on Monday...Now feeling better but not fully recovered yet...

My simulation is turtle indeed...

My simulation takes 4 days to complete...what the...== Will look into it after I've the mood to do it.

Btw, downloaded Bioshock and played a bit. Great graphics for a 2007 game, time to return to Rapture!

Finished CoD 4

Phew, as the Chinese New Year is around the corner I am less and less motivated to do my FYP now...hopefully I could be recharged during the break :) By the way I've finished Call of Duty 4 on my mac, quite a cool game. Cinematic, full of twists, and not too long. Each mission only takes around 10 to 15 mins, unless you die too often..:P

Running big jobs on the computing centre server, slow till like a turtle lol...

Argh...Not productive at all

I've been a bit sad these two days. I've made no progress in FYP since last week presentation, understood the course materials hardly, cannot do the tutorials and had no motivation to start writing the thesis! Instead I came here to blog lol

Buck up, it's not that hard right? Just go for it KG!

Welcome back!

It's been a long time...I've been busy with my honors year project in the first semester, and came to realize that I've been not updated my blog for 6 months! That proves how lazy I am...lol

Bought a mac, used since September last year, and everything goes smoothly as expected. OS X is fun to tinker with, beautiful eye candy and very user friendly. though I miss my times in Linux world at times...

Just finished second Honors year presentation, loooooong winded like a granny. I exceeded the time limit, and it seems that I do need time to hone my presentation and scripts before I go for presentations...