Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Happy Birthday!

Actually…my birthday was two days ago, so this post is a tad late. This is just a short update bcoz it’s way past my bedtime!

Just wanna drop by and say that I had a great birthday. Despite being on a busy lecture day, my friends and birthday well-wishers had made my day especially special with both some nasty and pleasant surprises.  ^_^

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all. Thanks for the wishes, thanks for the treats, thanks for the gifts, and most important of all thanks for the priceless time, fun, and laughter shared together! I would really like describe everything in full, but I guess I would have to save it for some other time for now. Thanks again. Goodnight!     

Friday, August 07, 2009

Photoshop for Dummies

What have I done in one week’s time?

Selected as one the members of PnP Department for EDX, the timing of the unexpected one week holiday could not have been better. Although I whine about it at first, the temporary halt on all academic activities means that I could focus on improving and sharpening my Photoshop skills.

But I must admit, there’s so much more for me to learn as my current knowledge about Photoshop is only slightly above basic level!

I had only begun to explore Photoshop during last semester’s break.  From being dazzled by the arrays of weird buttons placed before me when I first open the software after installing it, at least I have progressed by knowing the main functions of each tools (which I initially called them “buttons”). Of course, knowing is not enough, I had yet to practise and use each of the tools to their full potential. Right now, I’m extremely interested in ‘vectors’, which are readily designed shapes and images for Photoshop that can be freely manipulated. There are tons of them that can be downloaded for free from the internet. That’s only one aspect on Photoshop. There’s a lot more new terms I will learn soon hopefully as there’s always room for improvement, only time is the limit. 

Photoshop talk brushed aside, I had done nothing except the mundane, from fervently buying back my friends in ‘Friends For Sale’ in Facebook to watching an outdated movie ‘Dragonball Evolution’ that I accidentally stumbled upon in my computer. Who knows how many movies I had downloaded but never have the time to watch? 

To update things, on Thursday, I dined with my family and bought some supplies from Giant supermarket. My returning load has increased to an additional bag, filled with the supplies I’d bought earlier and stuff that I’d initially forgotten to bring back before the semester started.

On Friday, I went to Damai station and followed Calvin’s car back to UTP, along with Kalai and Arun as well. Thanks Calvin for the ride! To be able to drive long-distance journey on busy highways is not an easy task (at least I think so, because I’m not a hardened road warrior yet), so kudos!

We arrived at UTP around 7pm and I was wondering how the ‘health screening’ was going to be conducted. Seeing that they had divided all the villages’ residents into different dates for the screening, I was expecting a throughout health check which will probably be time-consuming, hence the different timeslots to avoid the sudden massive crowd of students coming back on Sunday.

But to my surprise, after filling up a form, each of us only get a less than one minute forehead scanning and temperature record! Forgive me, I admit I do not know how sophisticated that forehead scanning device thingy is, but I couldn’t help but doubt its reliability since it did not even made contact with the skin, so how accurate can the temperature recording be?

Those within the normal healthy body temperature range are given a slip verifying that we are healthy, and we are required to bring the slip along at all time in the campus for a week. Upon returning to our rooms, I had another surprise. Our rooms are untouched and there was no detoxification process carried out. Well, at least my food, bed sheet and clean clothes are spared.  They closed down the campus and advised us to evacuate so that they can carry out all these cleaning and detoxifying, do they not?

I cannot make head or tail on what’s going really going around here but I hope the management know what they are doing. I certainly do not hope that UTP was closed down again (although it is unlikely for an institution to be closed down twice @_@). Enough with dousing us with cold water and plummeting us back to holiday mood just when we had warmed up our engines and ready to get the semester going.

Now that we had gone through the few introductory lessons to our courses in the first two weeks, the real challenge shall starts after this week! That means less blogging too, unless I have the time to complain about my how busy I am! Bye for now.         

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Freaky Friday

So much for my passionate ramblings about time management in looking forward to a smooth-sailing semester, who would expect things to go to such awry extend that it felt like a huge meteor had just crashed on your path and throwing everything out of sync?

It was 31st of Friday, I had finished my one and only 10-11am lecture for that day and was expecting a leisurely weekend ahead and perhaps going to Ipoh with my course mates.

Walking back from lecture, I was dropped the bombshell news that UTP was going to close down on that very day!

At first, I cannot believed it at all. This is serious matter to begin with. UiTM in the local area had also been shut down recently due to H1NI. If it was true UTP was shutting down as well, such matter should be announced in the e-learning earlier. UTP had been monitoring and quarantined many students lately so I assumed things should be under control. It is simply illogical that UTP would mete out this big decision without at least notifying the students. 

Disregarding the news as rumours, I joined my friends for lunch. But the “rumours” soon gained momentum and everyone was talking about it, although it was only from words of mouth as there was no official announcement on the website. Yet, barely after an hour, almost everyone was convinced it was true, especially when the sources of grapevines were from lecturers and block O officers themselves!

While I was still in shock and confusion trying to digest the truth, or whether to believe it at all, my elated friends had already made fast plans on how to leave UTP. It’s all talk followed by immediate actions. I hurriedly shower and packed my lightest travelling load ever in less than 30 minutes, bringing only my laptop and some clothes. A whole bunch of us left for the bus station and bought the soonest ticket possible to KL.

By evening we reached KL Sentral after taking the monorail. Putting our luggage in the lockers, we went to MidValley and had a great dinner at Manhattan Fish Market. After having fun the whole night, we returned to Kl Sentral and bid farewell. Graham, Kerry, and Steward would be staying overnight to take the earliest bus to LCCT the next morning to catch their flight to Sarawak, while Jonathan, Chin, Mike and Su Fang stayed at my house for the weekend as they would be heading to Johor Bahru on Sunday.

Things happened so fast that I can’t believe I’m already home when I had just attended my IMSE lecture in UTP on the very same day. Nevertheless, the “Home Sweet Home” feeling has started to seep in and it feels awesome to be back at home with my family again.

To update the weekend, on Saturday, the five of us went to Sunway Pyramid and had a great time ice skating, shopping, and eating out in food franchises that cannot be found in Ipoh. Waffle World was fantastic! It does burn a big hole in the pockets so I suggest only to try it out once in a blue moon. I bought a literally cool T-shirt and a pair of slacks at an unbelievable discount in Padini and it was worth it.

On Sunday the foursome left early in the morning to Pudu. After bidding them farewell, I continued my sleep and woke up in the late afternoon. Engulfed by the sudden silence and absentees of my friends, it felt almost surreal that things had been so hectic the past few days.

As much as I want to follow my fellow friends to Johor, I have a few plans pending so I would prefer spending this week at home. Despite this uncalled “holiday” disrupting one week of my academic calendar, I realised that it is a blessing in disguise and an opportunity for me.    ;) 

That’s all for now, will update soon.