About Time

I’ll be resigning from the Technical Assistants Attachment Programme in my college very soon. I haven’t had the time to be very active in the team recently, and I decided that I need to quit – to be fair. I need the time for my school work. Time is certainly scarce this year. I don’t have much time for sleep, let alone for anything else. Been juggling work, school work, more school work so much during the weekdays I just end up being ineffective during the weekends. It’s a pain, but that’s how things are and how things will be in the future anyway. Nothing comes free.

That aside, I have this… slight unwillingness to quit. I’ve been in the team for more than 3 years now. Longer than most members, except William and… well except William. I’ve seen fresh faces come and go. I’ve see old faces go. I’ve seen fresh face become old face. I’ve seen fresh fruits become rotten.

The experience was invaluable. I didn’t only learn quite a bit, but it was great fun. Staying in college till late nights with no one watching us was a fun thing. I made friends with people who I’d otherwise never meet. I met friendly students. I met mean students. I made money. I gained basic work experience. I made friends with my superiors. Occasionally I went to work on Saturdays, once having McDonalds for lunch because the cafeteria was closed and superior went and got us McD. Sometimes we had to work in labs without aircon (not forgetting there are dozens of heat-generating PCs in each lab), sometimes we had to work in freezing temperatures where the air condenses. Shared thoughts and secrets among my colleagues. Went for late night meals with them. Hauled tables/chairs/computers/printers/whatnot up and down 3 floors with them. Well we’re *supposed* to be so-called Technical Assistants but we get treated as the logistics people from time to time.

Many a times, things were much fun. But things can’t be always good, can they? We do occasionally get grilled by our superiors, grilling from lecturers which in turn will be forwarded to our superiors which results in more grilling from superiors, and sometimes even from the my superiors’ superior. Which is bad. But most of our bad experiences come from students themselves. It is during moments of desperation (like having an assignment due in 5 minutes and they need to use the computers) when they often show their true colours. It is comforting when you meet some truly pleasant students, but most of the time we won’t have that much luck.

3 years being in the team certainly gave me much more experience than I could write about.

Seeing new faces in the team every couple of months made me feel old.

But this time, it’s time for them to see me go.

New Poll Open

The new poll is now open! I couldn’t think of an interesting question actually, but I was a little thirsty earlier and I was wondering what to drink, and it struck me that it’d be fun to find out what everybody else likes to drink

If your drink of choice isn’t listed in the poll, just post your preferred answer here and I’ll add it to the list as soon as possible. Go on, vote!

It’s Official. Doraemon is COOL!

Rejoice! It’s now official that Doraemon is cool! The poll “What do you think about Doraemon?” has been running for more than 2 months so it’s time to stop it and find out the results! [poll=5] There’s almost twice as many people who said Doraemon is cool compared to those who think otherwise. Sadly, there were 3 people who didn’t know who Doraemon was. It’s a pity I’m not the only one who thinks Doraemon is cool though. Pico Iyer, a contributor to the TIME magazine, wrote about Doraemon being “The Cuddliest Hero in Asia“. I totally agree when he said:

He takes the very condition that we associate with melancholy—being blue—and makes it smile.

Now that we all agree that Doraemon is cool (majority wins ), let’s think of the next question… any suggestions?

Misbehaving Knee

I’ve got a bad knee. I’m only 21.3452 and my left knee is starting to hurt. The weather was particularly cold today. Cold and wet. And perhaps because I sat in front of my computer for too long (I was working!), my knee began to hurt when I went out for dinner. My left knee has been giving me trouble for quite some time already. But it’s usually only noticeable when I start walking out from a cold cinema after prolonged periods of sitting down with my knees bent. But today wasn’t as cold as the air-conditioning in cinemas. And I don’t think I sat still for as long as I’d have in cinemas. Sounds like bad news.

I can’t really remember what caused the pain. I do remember me falling down pretty hard once, but what I don’t remember is hurting which leg. I don’t know if that particular fall was the cause for this. Regardless, having pains like these at this age is a bad sign for sure.

By 30, if I’m unlucky I might need crutches.

But then again, if I’m lucky by 40 I might have new robotic legs!

Let’s just hope it doesn’t have to come to that.

A Pleasant Surprise

This post is created entirely in Microsoft Word 2007. Posting from Word is far easier and faster than from within WordPress itself. A pleasant surprise from Microsoft

P/S: Don’t bother the lizard. He’s just my test subject

P/P/S: After playing around with it a little while longer, I realized Word 2007 could do more than I thought it could. It could automatically upload images, as well as edit already existing posts. It could serve as a very capable offline blog editor. Then again, that’s to be expected from one of the most expensive office productivity suites around, eh?