Words find themselves hard to stick in one piece as they escape his mouth riding on a heavy Middle-eastern accent. Incomprehensible syllables collapse into hypnotic murmurs that mutes the world into a muffled silence as I resorted to lip-read his 350-WPM bullet-train of sentences. All the awhile drawing my dreamy gaze onto every silent flap, sway and whirl of his arms.

I shifted my focus to the projection screen in front of the class that’s supposed to show figures and formulas and notes but nothing came into clarity. I squinted, but my weary eyes did the opposite — the world around warped into blurriness as my eyelids fell shut at the opportunity.

Large. Blank. Void. Nothing.

Clueless in the morning light.

The mid-term break right now does little to slow down what I feel is our toughest semester yet. Yes, it’s been a whole half of a semester since I wrote anything or uploaded any photos. Speaking of which, I guess I have been taking my liberation off Project 365 a little too heavily.

Endless piles of assignment, tutorial and lab work dictates firing up Adobe Lightroom an unnecessary luxury. What more clicking around with my dSLR. Not that I feel great about it. I left behind readers of my now-dormant photoblog and if I may say so, a following on Flickr that accompanied me through my 365 journey. Danbo’s lying beside my laptop enveloped in a thin but unmistakable layer of dust. Comments such as the one ejana left on my 365 finale shot broke my heart.

Lost in a sea of sand.

My inner shutterbug wants more than anything to get out.

But as they always say: desperate times, desperate measures.

Let not the lack of updates to this poor blog deceive you though, for you bet, the semester was so jam-packed that I promptly shied away from the Add New Post button. But this blog wasn’t left idle for nothing.

We pulled through preparing a case study report and presenting it later..

Kheng Shin talking on the Da Vinci Surgical Robot

We spent hours on end building, programming, testing and programming, and programming, aaand programming a Lego robot for the Robotic Competition..

Troubleshooting robot problems while Kheng Shin snapped us

..which exceeded our wildest expectations when it secured a shiny 3rd place.

Victory

We got a taste of industrial machining when we grinded and milled a nut and bolt out of bare steel cylinders.

Forming a bolt on a lathe machine

We’d never look at music boxes in gift shops the same way again after cracking our heads implementing one in Embedded Microcontrollers.

Music Boxes are a pain to program I tell you

We celebrated our achievements in the scholarships presentation ceremony..

Scholars of joy

In a few hours time, we’d head into the halls. Where the air-cond chill and endless rows of isolated tables arranged in a perfect grid overwhelms your surroundings, as if designed specifically to thwart your confidence. As we approach our designated desks, although in sweaty palms and short, cold breaths, we sit down in dignity.

Danbo studies

For it is with dignity we make 4-months of hardship — worthwhile.

Good luck!

Nonetheless, this time I went with a whole different company of friends — Natalius and Ms. Chong planned a day trip as soon as the Saturday of the week of our last paper itself. Six of us went in two cars that morning.

Kayaks on Beach

Despite spending retreats to permai every semester break of my life, I’ve never driven there myself. There’s always someone else to be the driver. Not this time though.

The road to Damai is pretty straightforward, but there’s one patch I never seem to remember — the roundabouts in Petra Jaya. I get them mixed up all the time and I wasn’t spared a wrong turn this time either. And I had to make wrong turns both going and returning. I’m not usually bad with directions but I somehow managed to proved so during this trip, heh.

Rocky Beach Bokeh

Siong Huo was jokingly skeptical if I was on the right road all the way but I proved him dead wrong when we reached the sandy shores of the Damai beach.

Waterball

We wasted no time jumping into the water with our newly-purchased ball. But because the sun was so blazingly hot and we didn’t want to get baked on the nicely-heated sand, we jumped into a stream in cool tree shade instead.

Natalius’s mighty kick failed to launch the ball

Kicking around in the tiny stream bored us pretty quickly. It was only a matter of time before we charged towards the wide open sea, hot or no hot.

We soon found out though, that it was rather tricky to actually launch a stationary ball on water into the air. Further observation would show that the density of water dampens our swing towards the ball. If that wasn’t enough, the displaced water effectively pushes the floating ball forward, causing us to miss the ball completely more often than not.

Ball Flip Fail

But when it comes to having fun, the rules of Physics doesn’t apply anymore. Hell, screw Physics anyway — the finals are long history already. =P

So we kicked and splashed around like we’ve never been to a beach with a ball.

Ninja Beach Kick

Then suddenly Heng Hong surprised us with a mighty ninja-kick sending the ball flying towards Singaporean shores. Okay it barely made it over Siong Huo’s head but it was the kick of the day.

Natalius flips the ball

Natalius wasn’t so happy with Heng Hong’s sudden fame so he sabotaged the ball and headed to drier sand and started to show some skillz. Suddenly he felt like an 80 million British-pound player.

Anyway, we were soon bored with the ball and decided to conquer the rocks instead.

Siong Huo and Natalius heading for the rocks

We dared ourselves to scale the largest monolith we could find in the area.

The brave Mt. Rock Permai three

So we camwhored a bit and savored the sea breeze from atop the rock. Chee Min and Heng Hong joined us later but we soon scrambled down the rock as it got too baking-hot for us to sit on.

Sea of Bokeh

Because we fried our butts while sitting on the rock, we retired to sea to get wet again — this time we tried kayaking. We were supposed to head out in three two-person kayaks but only one was available for another hour. So Heng Hong and Chee Min went out first while we helped them out.

Push

While both of them were out paddling around the Damai bay, we waited for the other kayaks to return so we could head out together and have a kayak-flipping war. But the Permai beach management suddenly decided to halt the kayaking rental service before we had any chance to hop on.

Out to the sea

Long story short, we couldn’t join them. But with the kayak rental service hut left unmanned and thus, no one to supervise the returning of kayaks, we swam out and as Chee Min and Heng Hong paddled near us, we flipped them off their kayak and sabotaged it for ourselves.

Chee Min and Heng Hong were tired of paddling around anyway so Siong Huo and I took over captainship of the kayak — free of charge. =D

The Bokeh Monster

The last time I paddled a kayak was during NS, way back in 2007. What mattered back then was speed in order to win the water games. But now we spent every ounce of energy left on a slow paddle along the coast when we passed another beachfront of the Permai camp where a few couples were embracing in the water.

That sight led to Siong Huo and I talking about relationships and stuff while we drifted back to the beach.

By then, we were all tired, exhausted and hungry. We unanimously decided to have a late lunch at Hartz Chicken Buffet back in Kuching. In no time we were invading the doors of Hartz like hungry zombies smelling like the beach. Luckily we had to whole outlet to ourselves or else we could’ve scared everyone else off. =D

Hermit crab digs

I was so occupied in gobbling down chicken wings and mashed potatoes I didn’t take any pictures when we were in Hartz. Go figure. But yeah, we called it day after lunch, all stuffed, drained and wearing a layer of tan that is still peeling off as I type this, but nonetheless we had great fun.

So it’s the semester break again. I’ll certainly miss the company of friends back in campus as boring as semester breaks can get. I’ll be flying off to KL tomorrow with my family to send off my sister furthering her studies to the West, but that’s a post for another day.

Until then, Happy Holidays everyone.

Tone-mapped 3-exposure HDR of the campus

This time around though, our brilliant brains over at the Student Admin devised another tutorial enrollment method — first come, first serve tutorial registrations during the first lectures throughout the first week. Student admin officers would come in in a middle of a lecture and wreak havoc turning a class of a hundred sitted students into a stampede of hopefuls rushing to secure their names on a list of their desired tutorial group.

More often than not, scenes like that turn ugly when the slower ones were left group-less or left with tutorial slots that wouldn’t fit the timetable. Then there are moments of utter confusion of the assigned time slots, the cutting of queues, exchanging of shouts between the student admin officers and students — you get the idea.

Tutorial registration during Energy & Motion lectures in the Lecture Theater

All these experimenting of tutorial enrollment methods semester after semester left me wondering how does our parent University in Melbourne conduct their tutorial enrollments. I’m sure there’s an effective way our student admin can learn from and stick with rather than changing how we register our tutorial slots every semester, never failing to cause chaos and confusion every time.

Eggy’s pencil case during C Programming Labs

Anyhow, the dust has settled and tutorials, labs and lectures are now in full swing. This semester brings about a few rather interesting subjects other than the four boring exam-oriented ones I had last semester. There’s this Robotics Project 1 subject that includes a component on C Programming — something I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. We also have a component on Computer Aided Design which we started off with manual drawing of plans before moving on the mastering the well-known and used AutoCAD program.

Making a beeline for The Spring mall

On a related note, now that the semester has started, I’m finding it rather hard to keep up with Project 365. Not that I didn’t see this coming, but I thought I could persevere. I just couldn’t see myself bringing my dSLR to campus everyday looking for that shot. Then there’ll be waves of assignments to be dealt with, tests and exams. Blah.

I’ve been thinking hard on my decision to go on with Project 365 now that it’s been put on a temporary hiatus. Sacrificing my dSLR for my parents’ trip to NZ was harder that I thought, no doubt. But I thought it was worthwhile considering it is a once-in-a-lifetime trip and thus, are memories worth being recorded with the best gear possible.

Rest assured, Project 365 is a challenge I’m willing to push myself to accomplish — fueled both by my love for photography and you, yes you, for your support and readership — are really what that keeps me going on, be it also in praises, constructive criticisms or just plain Flickr pageviews.

Seeing chrome — taken outside The Spring — 50mm f/1.8

Until then, see you in an aeon. =)

I had my reservations at first — would I be able to keep up, would I have the determination to not miss a single day, do I already take photos that are actually worthy of posting daily, etc. Then there are concerns that I haven’t yet fully mastered the potential of shooting with a dSLR.

Tilt-shift effect applied on a shot of Swinburne’s Kuching campus

It can be really demotivating when a whole set of photos doesn’t turn out to be up to your expectations. LCDs can only tell you so much. Its only when you download them all into your PC where you can view them in their full under/overexposed, out-of-focus glory. Of course, lessons are learnt and I certainly would not expect to be a decent photographer overnight, but the high rate of failures kept me from jumping into starting a Project 365 photoblog.

But the Photojojo’s article I stumbled upon directly addressed my concerns and lists a few extra benefits of starting such a project:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day. #

While motivating, I still had concerns if I should find myself giving up halfway. Luckily the editors at Photojojo foresaw this and even mentioned there’ll definitely be days where people consider giving up and such. So they offered tips on how tackle that, too.

More miniature tilt-shift effect fakery =P

Upon finishing that article, I felt there is no reason I should not embark on this project. It’s a big commitment, yes. And I foresee the final exams season which I would obviously have minimal time with my camera let alone going online, but let the future decide for itself shall we?

So I decided to take that plunge.

I whipped up a quick and simple dark-coloured theme and slapped it onto a subdomain of tehCpeng.net — img.tehCpeng.net — which is the address of my spanking new photoblog. The sharp ones amongst you would already know that ‘img’ is short for ‘image’. I initially used that subdomain to point all my images (I still do), but I couldn’t think of a better name for the photoblog. ‘photography.tehcpeng.net’ was a little too long, ‘photoblog-’ is way too generic. So I settled with the short and sweet, ‘img’. =)

I’ve started off my Project 365 with a photo from the 1st of January (1/365), followed by a skip to 19th of January as 2/365. That makes the photo I’ll post later on today (crap it’s already after midnight!) 3/365. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of this later on.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to

img.tehCpeng.net

*shameless plug*

Seems like it was only yesterday we were prepping our battleguns. If only tomorrow would seem like the holidays already!

The past week though, was grueling. I’ve never had a worst study week.

It’s a period of seven days where your mind floats between crushing exam stress and the sunny post-exam holiday paradise. On one hand, you’re frantically worrying about circuits, integrals and whatnot. The other, you’ll be drifting along the freeway at 190mph steering your 370Z around sharp bends in Undercover and how to tackle that backlog of games and movies after the exams.

The only thing keeping my will to live on during this dark period are these:

SERIOUSLY.

If I’d manage to secure results good enough for a Merit Scholarship this semester, Kinder Bueno’s would single-handedly hold full credit.

No other wafer bars come close to these absolutely creamy milky heavenly bites. RLC Circuits are suddenly so darn interesting. So here’s another picture to keep you salivating.

Wish me luck! =)

The wonders of a three-week-lack of updates.

The next few weeks will be crucial to both SPMers, STPMers and university students as we charge head-on into the exam season.

Best of luck to all.

Raindrops smear the windows of the shuttle bus as I looked out into the chilly morning weather. As the bus battles the traffic trying to get on the Simpang Tiga intersection, I felt somewhat alienated from the city around me. A city I’ve spent 9 years living in.

Yet something felt different. Perhaps it was sitting in the bus, the feeling of insecurity of being deprived of driving a car. Perhaps it was the chilly weather. Perhaps it was the fact that it was the campus’s big day.

As the bus whizzed past flyovers and high-rises, the towering blocks of Swinburne University of Technology’s extended campus came into view. It was almost majestic. It certainly didn’t feel like it was the campus I see and study in everyday.

It was then when I wondered if, just if, this is how international students in Swinburne first experience Kuching.

It was after all, the Grand Opening Ceremony for Swinburne’s new extended campus. Due to the event, the multi-storey carpark was restricted to invited guests while we students had to park at the off-campus carpark in Kenyalang with shuttle services to and fro campus thoughout the day.

You see, I had volunteered to be part of the Student Press team for SwinTalk, Swinburne’s spanking-new community blog to cover the event. I would like to thank Saad for the oppurtunity!

The campus had been literally draped with gorgeous yellow and black cloth ahead of the event.

By 1pm, the VIPs, invited guests and dignitaries such as this one from China started pouring in. So did the sky, which haven’t yet decided to hold back on the down-pour (pun not intended). =P

Inside the Multi Purpose Hall, the guests were seated while the hall waits for the VVIP. I’d like to thank Woonyien for bringing me in! If not for her, I’d be standing out there without the slightest clue. =\

Sorry, panorama removed due to old and broken code used to display it. If you still want to view the image (and you really should), click here.

The hall was easily filled with professionals from all over. Not to mention being littered with scores of photographers and TV cameramen from the media.

At around 2pm, following an announcement by the MC, the VVIP arrives — none other than the Chief Minister of Sarawak. So here’s a measly shot of him looking away. Lol.

A cultural dance courtesy of the Sarawak Cultrual Village performed at the VVIP’s arrival.

After the speeches by both Bill Scales, Chancellor of SUTS and the Chief Minister, they both proceeded up the stage for the symbolic lighting up of the torch to signify the official opening of the extended campus.

The torch was well..fake. Something happened during the torch lighting though. Halfway through the torch-lighting, everyone suddenly heard a muffled tumbling. Turns out one of the photographers who bravely invaded the stage tripped over that yellow fence you see at the backdrop and fell smack on the floor, DSLR and all. LOL.

That was when all the other photographers below the stage where I was broke into laughter. Luckily the CM didn’t seem to notice anything.

A campus tour was due for the CM right after that. So here’s another measly shot of him exiting the hall.

My camera doesn’t like our Lord White Hair at all. =\

After the campus tour, the VVIP and the VIPs were treated to refreshments with a view of student performances at the open air area between block B and E.

The African performers were noteworthy though, with their freestyle raps and hiphop songs. Here’s a photo of my fellow coursemate from Nigeria, Abdullahi doing his thing yo. I didn’t catch the title of their song but the lyrics were really catchy. It didn’t take long before everyone was singing and cheering along.

Damn I never knew he could pull off a performance like that!

After a few performances, I got tired of standing and went around the campus for more photographic opportunities. When I spotted this:

Forget Terengganu’s recent Mercedes buying spree. Check out Sarawak’s line up! Here we have the Chief Minister’s Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, a Jaguar XJ believed to be the House Minister’s and an unknown E-Class Benz in the distance. Wowzers.

There were even more BMWs (Alfred Jabu’s sleek 7-Series), Mercs, Accords and so on paraded right behind these three vehicles belonging to the state’s big shots.

Anyway, the CM left at around 5pm shortly after the student performances ended.

Check out SwinTalk for a review of the campus! As of writing, its not up yet though.

All I can say is that the new campus is awesome. Swinburne feels much more like a University now, as opposed to that single block we had before this. There are of course, insufficiencies for being new.. but I’ll keep the pros and cons for another day.

As for now, congratulations Swinburnites!

Results were finally out last Friday after a whole week of postponement. I was out with my family during the results release and had to check the results online via my dads phone. The slow EDGE connection and tiny mobile screen were no help to the suspense.

I swear my heart was inches away from pumping itself out of my chest as I scrolled through the cluttered Excel file on my dad’s mobile.

That said, I’m on my way to degree in August!

Which, though, puts me in another dilemma. For as of now, I have not a vague idea of which specific discipline of Engineering I should take up as my degree.

I initially entered the Swinburne engineering foundation course with a degree in Robotics and Mechatronics in sights. But over the course of the year (yes! it’s been a year) of studying in Swinburne, I had come to conclude that Robotics isn’t going to be easy and had subsequently opened myself up to other choices.

Now I’m torn between Civil, Mechanical and Robotics. I’m not so keen on Electrical and Electronics, so I’m more than happy to drop it off my list of choices. Mechanical sounds boring, Civil isn’t good in job prospects due to an apparent over-supply of Civil Engineers, and Robotics is well, tough and isn’t in substantial demand locally.

The fact that I have a grand total of three days left to decide isn’t helping at all. Degree enrollments are next Monday!

Argh.

Best. Superhero. Movie. Ever.

Big decisions aside, I managed to convince my dad to bring us to watch The Dark Knight last Saturday. And god was it AWESOME. I know everyone’s been saying it! Yet after I watched it, I don’t see a reason not to!

The Dark Knight succeeds as a dark, gripping thriller that didn’t fail to entice even though it was a wee bit draggy being 2 and a half hours long. Seeing as I was literally on the edge of my seat all throughout the movie!

And I must applaud the stunning performance of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker, whose dark and maniacal antics bound to send chills down your spine, if not leaving a lasting, dark impression of the movie. He’d mercilessly throw you on a wild ride as his evil schemes gets played along time after time, leaving you helplessly wondering just how the movie is going to lead.

If you haven’t watched it, you have my every endorsement to do so!

In the words of The Joker, and my favourite dark quote from the movie, “Why ..so.. serious?”

Wiiicked! =P

All About SUVs

I had actually promised to show you guys my IT2 project entitled All About SUVs a while ago. I had to optimise the images, iron out bugs and have the whole code go through more QC before I could release it here. Thing is, I’ve completed everything almost a month ago but totally forgot to post it up.

So without further ado, here it is!

WARNING: #1: Doesn’t work in Safari and Opera. Only enter if you’re using Internet Explorer 7+ or Mozilla Firefox 2+. Preferably of course, viewed in Mozilla Firefox 3.

#2: Site may take awhile to load due to large images. (Speed optimisation can only go so far..) For those of you on modems, enter at your own risk!

The Guide gets better!

On a related note, I’ve spent some time revamping the most important page of tehCpeng.net — the About the drink page. I’ve noticed there’s an increasing number of you who arrived on that page while searching for Kuching’s famous drink. So to live up to your expectations, I’ve styled and souped up everything on that page. And of course.. to better live up to the tehCpeng.net domain. =)

Oh, and if you have friends who are clueless as to what teh C peng exactly is, or if you just want to share and promote the Kuching teh-C peng love, I wouldn’t mind if you link them to this guide of mine!

tehCpeng.net/thedrink

A community service proudly brought to you by tehCpeng.net.

Well, that’s pretty much what I’ve been busy with these holidays. I also have two WordPress themes up my sleeve — one in the process of coding and another still on the drawing board. The former, a theme for my client’s blog and the latter, a theme for Swinburne’s upcoming unofficial community blog.

Look out for it!

I swear my head is crackling-dry now.

The finals are thankfully, history. All the sweat and anxiety left on the 8th floor as we turn our backs on the double doors of LH8.13 after our Physics paper.

The Physics B paper was.. okay. My last minute of skimming through the previous test papers paid off when similar questions came out. Engineering Math did suck a little though. So I’m gonna have to pray really hard for a damned pass.

But that, will be none of my worries for the next week or two. =)

For its time to enjoy life. Like this cat.

Except it didn’t quite enjoy one of its nine lives when I drove over her last November.

Its been seven months. And I can’t recall if I did ever saw her lying around the house. Then again, for the past few months hectic campus life meant I was paying less attention to cats in the car porch, if any.

Well since my history with cats and exam seasons go back a long time. I was half-expecting that long-lost cat to show up this time around since it was the finals.

And oh yeah did she show up.

..the day before my Physics paper.

At least she’s enjoying THIS life. =D

OMG.