As the end of course nears, the last three weeks are filled with all sorts of tests and exams and summary exercises to complete, although I have assurance from my friend that they are easy to pass. The end of course also means getting posted to unit. All of us are eagerly awaiting (and guessing) where we can get posted to. The dream post is a 8-5 job at SI or at HQ. Haha.

We were given five weeks to complete the first chapter of our network course, and now we have two weeks to complete the second chapter. I have just completed five module tests, and the scores dropped steadily from 92.3 to 65.0:(

The presense of animals in our accommodation block has spiced up our otherwise monotomous lives there. First was a bird nest complete with a little family that appeared a few weeks back. The bird nest was mysteriously destroyed, but the family of four still sits at the pipe every day. Then there is this cat which has fur so neat that I suspect its someone's pet. It hangs around the ground floor lobby, which we play with when we go downstairs for a snack at night. One thing I note is that it meows at everyone, as if its trying to tell us something.

Finally something for everyone to enjoy, thanks to G.

The Japanese have finally uncovered a mystery. How does the small arrow on your computer monitor work when we move the mouse? Haven't you ever wondered? Now, through the miracle of high technology, we can see how it is done. With the aid of a screen magnifying lens, the mechanism becomes apparent. Click on the following link and you will find out:

http://www.1-click.jp/

The image may take a minute or two to download and when it appears, Slowly move your mouse over the light gray circle and you will see how the Magic works. Then move fast and stop. Don't forget to try the left click button.

Back to studies.

Just realised network is actually quite fun. The theories are bloody dry, enough to send people off to dreamland the moment the lectures start, but the hands on are definitely interesting. Or maybe its just me.

Celebrated Racial Harmony Day on Friday (haha and I thought I will never experience it anymore after graduating from school), and we played traditional games. Cheated our way through Zero Point haha. Then there was the performances after the games. Each platoon was supposed to send in a skit script, and the top three gets to perform. We thought our skit was shit, but apparently the rest were even shitter, so we got first. Haha.

Watched Harry Potter. Its no wonder why many said its not as good as the previous movies. Overall the movie was not bad la, but even at 2 hours 10+ mins I still felt like it was too hastily rushed, and lacked abit of climax.

After that went down to Marina to catch a little of the NDP preview, specifically the defence display. First time I was in such close distance from moving choppers, but then its still abit too far. Standing at Merlion Park, the waters did not splash on us as promised by the papers when the Chinook came to 3m above the water. The only memorable event was when the Chinook carrying the national flag flanked by four Apaches flew past directly above us.

Ah. I plugged my expectations against my experience at the Air Force Open House last year. I can still remember the deafening noise from the fighter jets.

Tomorrow will be one packed day. A final tutorial and exam will be on Monday and Tuesday respectively, and I have six modules yet to complete. And then there is the network simulator which I have just downloaded that I hope to play around with.

Now that I'm out of BMT and in Signals, we get to book out on Friday evening, instead of the Saturday afternoon back in Tekong. In addition we have night's out every Wednesday, whereby we get to spend the evening outside.

I will do the same thing every Wednesday and Friday late afternoon - sms my two good friends to agree on a time and venue to meet up. We are in three different camps, but still not too far from each other. Time is precious, especially nights out where we book out at around 1800 and have to be back in our respective camps by 2200++.

Actually for nights out we do not do more than just sit down somewhere to have a chat while having dessert, but to me its important. Its quite an enjoyment simply listening to them talk.

Nothing spectacular after booking out too. Just a dinner, then home. But there is a big difference between having two friends to laugh with while taking one-hour MRT trips and sitting in a corner seat all by yourself staring into space.

The cookhouse at my camp is getting seriously overcrowded, now that the officer cadets had joined us. Last Friday there was a brillant idea to give a talk to the entire camp just before lunch. We spent more time queuing than eating the food.

I have a test come Tuesday, and I have a hefty 10 chapters worth of physics to study, but I ended up wasting more than half the day today rotting away.

Die Hard tomorrow morning, then a trip to the library, then a quick drop-by to my friend's house, and then studying for the rest of the day before I book in again.

Life.

Everyone has more or less settled down in the second week in Signals. Its still lessons and more lessons everyday; there is more laughter now, but a slight hint of low morale still lingers.

I'm lacking something to keep me occupied after my lessons end in the evening. I'm trying to cook up some ideas with regards to a project I hope to do, but so far I have not come up with anything useful.

Its Live Earth today, and some people are pointing out the irony that they are setting up stages that can power up 10 cities to tell us to save the Earth. Well personally I thought the videos and messages on environmental conservation should be useful, but celebrities blasting out their hits are..hmm.

I thought I will only have a brief brush with computers during my signals course, but never did I expect that I will be diving deep into computers for my 8 week course.

The BMTC e-posting put me into the 'infocomm 2' course, which is manpack radio. But on my first day there I was instead posted to the 'infosys' course, where my main job is well, computers.

Not too bad I guess, after looking through my schedule for the next 8 weeks (7 weeks as of today), because I will be learning very, very, very useful stuff.

Then again, I do miss the days of chiong-sua-ing with my friends by my side.

For now, I just sit back and enjoy my course.

Now I have so much free time at night, its time I bring in some books to read.

For the past week I have not done anything worth mentioning here, which explains the absence of entries here. But it seems like I'm not the only one to have outdated blogs around. Hmm is the blog trend dying out? Haha.

Block leave went by too fast for me to enjoy, and soon I will be packing my bags off to CCK where I will start my next phase of national service. Not sure what to expect yet, though there's nothing much I can do anyway. Just 走一步算一步 lor.

Besides gaming and web surfing I have not done anything related to computers for the past few, erm, months. Not sure if I will get to play any computers during my signals course, but now I have a sudden urge to start creating games using Macromedia Director again, something which I have stopped doing since secondary school. I'm glad to see Adobe is coming out with a new version of Director; previously I was still wondering if they are going to stop producing Director, since Flash is much more popular now.

I personally prefer Director, because I only know how to use Director hahahaha.

My urge came about after spending an hour in the library today reading a book on how to create racing games haha. I fell aslp after reading less than a fifth of it, because I have already half forgotten my maths haha. Besides the following chapters on OpenGL was getting too complicated for me to understand. Now.

But too bad, my urge comes as my block leave ends, so I no longer have whole days to sit in front of the computer to program. I should be spending my weekends outside camp, but I will be busy meeting friends. Anyway my first week in Signals shall be spent doing some observations, to see if it will be appropiate to bring in some books haha.

Till the next time.

Life sucks when one has no friends. Its my block leave but I have no one to enjoy it with.

Contrary to popular belief I am not spending all my time playing games. Gaming is only fun when you play with friends, not with some predictive AI.

And it doesn't help when I am neither close to my platoonmates, nor share the same interests to them. I don't find clubbing or DotA fun, for instance.

POP loh!

Tuesday and Wednesday were perhaps the most enjoyable days of my entire BMT. Tuesday night was one rare night of total havoc. While waiting for the tonners to come and fetch us back to Rocky Hill the recruits splashed water at the commanders. The commanders took revenge by making us fall in and knock it down, then made us all wet too. Then there was the push ups and jumping jacks which everyone for once enjoyed doing.

But perhaps the single most memorable thing that night was cheering as a company of 400 men: 200 lao jiaos at coy line, another 200 from the new mild obese batch, something which the neighbouring Hawk Coy could only envy. The roar produced was magificant.

After a final exchange of well wishes between the two batches we went back at Rocky Hill. Back in our own coy line we were given a lights out timing of 2359, and a last minute decision to order pizzas resulted in a party till late at night.

POP itself was just waitng and more waiting.

And now I'm a private. What's next for me? A good 11-day rest before I report to my new unit next next Monday. I don't know where I will be posted to; for now I just sit back and enjoy my block leave.

All right, my friends say I reveal too much about NS, so instead of just removing sensitive stuff I turned all of them into drafts. Yes we were told by our OC on our first day of enlistment with regards to blogging about national service, but I thought whatever I have blogged previously are already freely available in the forums and Wikipedia. Never mind, it doesn't hurt staying out of trouble.

Thanks to NS I have lost touch with all the latest news. Computex, the second biggest computer expo in the world and the largest in Asia, is ongoing now in Taiwan. The difference between Computex and the numerous IT shows we have here is that, Computex is a place where the different manufactors exhibit their latest technologies, whereas all our IT shows are simply giant while-stocks-last sales.

Anyway I was reading the various articles on Computex, and I realise exciting stuff like the Intel X38 chipset and DDR3 memory on motherboards are coming up. My computer is becoming outdated!

Then I surfed game websites and realise EA is coming up with a new Need For Speed game. I want!

In other news, Nvidia may be slashing the prices of its latest Geforce 8 series of graphics cards. Wonderful news to me, since I am really hoping to get one soon. I do hope the price cuts will come as soon as possible.

A few more days to POP!

While waiting for Hamachi to connect I might as well post an entry.

If you think I have been doing nothing but playing games the past few days, you are wrong! [I'm not a game addict!]

Spent Tuesday and Wednesday at home, didn't dare to go out because my CSM has once told us they do random calls to our houses to make sure we are at home resting and not outside having fun. Thursday and Friday went to PC Show [yes I went twice, not because I was crazy, but because I was going with two different groups of friends whom I have not met for some time].

Yesterday I spent three hours looking intensively at both NUS and NTU's websites, trying to decide which course to accept before the deadline is up.

So today evening I will be booking in again, at the record early time of 1740. This week will be a half-xiong week for me, thanks to my fever last week. There is re-IPPT [I heard will be tomorrow! I definitely rather go tomorrow than book in again during block leave], SOC, and the last major event before we pass out - 24km route march on Tuesday. The consolation is that there is Recruit's Evening tomorrow night, and we are booking out on Wednesday, because of the obese batch that will be coming in.

Now I am [im]patiently waiting for Hamachi to connect me up with my friend so we can have at least a game of Tiberium Wars before I book in. But sian Heaven seem to be out to spoil my day. Haix.

At the top of my wishlist: a 8600GT 256MB GDDR3!

I have been talking too much about army isn't it? Can't blame me actually, since my life now is nothing but army.

On my trip home today it suddenly dawned on me that I have not seen a weekday Singapore for a very, very long time. Today I saw a typical noon where students have just finished vacation lessons and were lazing around the bus interchange chatting with friends while waiting for buses to come, and office workers walking through in groups either to have their lunch, or to return to office after their meals. The entire crowd created a buzz that is usually not seen on weekends, where people would generally just be heading towards town to meet friends and shop. It is even worse at Tekong; I don't even get to see anything that is not green in colour, or hear anything else besides the firing of gunpowder.

I miss being a civilian.

In other news, computer games are getting more and more realistic these days, which is supposed to be a good thing, but the games are improving too fast for the hardware (and our pockets) to catch up. An example is this. I have always loved playing off road racing games, but the previous game, Colin McRae Rally 2005, could not run on Vista, so I was excited when Codemasters was coming out with DiRT.

But alas, the system requirements of the game are too high! My five-month-old computer just reached the minimum system requirements, and when I tried out the demo, the game was very laggy, even at the lowest settings (640x480!), so laggy that it was almost unplayable.

I recall my good friend told me before, meeting the minimum requirements only means 可以动。Haha.

I thought maybe the problem lies with my graphics card, because 7300LE is an entry-level card which was created for the purpose of home entertainment (aka watch movies), and not for intense gaming. I realised in recent days that the GPU temperature is 70degrees when idle, and easily shoots up to 80degrees when playing games!

Ok fine, I am just giving myself an excuse to buy a new card, since the PC Show 2007 is coming. Haha. Then again, the 8600GT looks like a good buy, and the fact that my good friend has got himself a powerful card recently is tempting me furthur.

Ever since I got my own NETS card and allowances from the SAF every month, I have become more and more greedy. You know, NETS is scaringly convenient. Just one swipe, press in 6 digits, and ta-ta, the thing is now yours (Recalls purchase of my $106 RAM. Bloody hell it cost 50bucks now nia.).

Fortunately my willpower to resist temptation is rather strong, because I frequently think about where I am going to find money to study in university (yes, I lied to my PC when I told him I do not have any financial problems. Well I do not have any now, but I foresee that happening in the future.), which is why you don't see me with an external hard disk or a PSP in my hands.

Going back to games, I don't think this advancement is going to slow down, going by the description of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a to-be-released game. While PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers can enjoy all these games without worrying about lagging or hardware not being able to run the game, PC gamers will have to burn large holes in their pockets.

I'm tired.

Its good to hear that our dear Prime Minister is donating his pay rise to charity for the next five years. While I personally think its more of a case of succumbing to pressure, it is nevertheless a good move. Hopefully the other ministers will do the same too.

Recently the airing of a radio drama on yes933 has introduced listeners to a song which they use as the theme song. Quite nice I like.

小情歌
这是一首简单的小情歌
唱着人们心肠的曲折
我想我很快乐
当有你的温热
脚边的空气转了
唱着我们心头的白鸽
我想我很适合
当一个歌颂者
青春在风中飘着
你知道就算大雨让这座城市颠倒
我会给你怀抱
受不了看见你背影来到
写下我度秒如年难捱的离骚
就算整个世界被寂寞绑票
我也不会奔跑
逃不了最后谁也都苍老
写下我时间和琴声交错的城堡
最后谁也都苍老

Everything is packed and ready; now I am just waiting for the time to come. This will be the single thing I will miss most during my BMT:



It is in its most unglamous state because I was lazy to put the casing back after I installed the second hard disk to it. Hopefully I can still recognise it (and more importantly, remember how to use it) when I come back.

See everyone in two weeks!

Recently the press and the public are hot over the issue of raise in civil servants' pay. Now our dear Prime Minister is going to be paid five times the salary of the US President.

Of course anyone in the low-to-middle class will be unhappy with this raise. Why the F* are the ministers getting millions of dollars a year in salaries while I get barely enough to survive? Of course, credit should be given to them for running the country well, but isn't $3.1 million a year abit too much?

I had a little discussion with a friend not long ago, and I think maybe I am too idealistic; I expect those ministers to serve the country out of their interests and love for the country rather than for the pay. If I were to question them then I will have to question the CEOs and talents of commercial companies and top professions as well, in which their salaries are being pegged to by the benchmark used. It makes no sense for me to question, since they have already gone ahead with the pay hike and they are not going to listen.

I find it amusing that they are debating about their own pay in Parliament. They can't possibly object to a raise in their own pay right? Quoting from CNA: "In the debate that followed the announcement involving civil service pay revisions, Members of Parliament generally agreed with paying competitive salaries for top talent in the civil service. "

The lust for money and power blinds all.

Then there is also the issue of the use of means testing in hospitals. During the elections two years back the Health Minister, standing for his party in a GRC, said that there may never be means testing at all. Now the same person is saying means testing will be carried out within the next 12 months.

I can't fault him anyway, for he said there may be no means testing at all, meaning there may still be. They give all sorts of reasons to back up their actions, leaving no room for arguments and flaws to exploit. What to do, bo bian accept lor.

In two days I will be enlisting into National Service. I am saying this here so that readers have the time to know and give me all the good luck I need. Haha. Perhaps if I am enlisting on another day there will be no need for me to do this, but sigh, I am enlisting on the Friday the 13th. Its a just-in-case kind of thing. Haha.

Time passes very fast; not too long ago I was still cursing the whole world why I am going in April instead of January when many many others are going in. Work has blurred my prespective of time, and very soon now its my turn.

National Service will be the start of another phase of my life, which will last two years. While I have already heard alot from my friends how BMT is like, hearing is still different from having to personally experience it myself. Its like orientation all over again, and orientation has always been nerve wrecking to me, because I have a big problem with going to a totally new place and talking to strangers [Recall that ECG test during my medical checkup].

Except this time, I am living with strangers. Hopefully I can adapt quickly.

In this world, there are very lucky people who are born into very close kint families, and have many good friends around.

There are not so lucky people, they either have no friends, but they have very close families, or they have no families, but they still have plenty of good friends to depend on whenever they need someone for company.

Then there are the real suay ones who have neither.

There are many times when I will feel that I belong to the last category. Sometimes when I sit infront of my computer eating my dinner, while everyone else sits down in front of their tables with their families enjoying nice meals. Other times I come up online to see none of the good friends online, before I find out they are outside happily with their own groups of friends.

No one actually hear me complain about it, because at the end of the day I will realise that at the very least I still have a complete family living under the same roof. And that I do not have to turn to drugs or cigarettes to fend off any loneliness [On the other hand, computer games seem no different from drugs or cigarettes haha].

Then again, relationship is a two way thing, and I think I shut myself out too much.

I don't feel like ending here, but I have to agree with G that 'blogger seems to have a negative induction force that blocks out all thoughts except the useless ones'.

Oh great. I can't get any linux installed on this computer.

After many days of procrastination I finally decided to get myself to work today. Hooked up my spare hard disk, formatted everything inside, and popped in the first cd of my Fedora Core 5.

To my utmost surprise a bunch of garbage text appeared, after all the initial booting. After trying a few more times to ensure its no freak accident, I went to try it on an old computer, and it worked. Suspected the error has something to do with my SATA hard disk, because the last thing it was loading before it hanged was some "sata_sil drivers", so I combed the Internet to see if anyone else have the same problem as me.

Found one here. Exactly the same except I only had 2 lines of garbage text and not one entire screen of them. But the help did not seem helpful.

Decided to try Ubuntu instead. Downloaded v6.10, burnt it to a cd, and tried it out. I was not expecting any problems with Ubuntu because I have v5.04, and the live cd worked when I tried it earlier on.

Surprise surprise, halfway through loading it hanged. Again I suspect its the hard disk.

So now I am back using the v5.04 live cd, typing this entry out. Very interesting to see that an old version works while newer ones don't. Maybe I am too noob to know why.

Have not decided what my next course of action will be. Most probably I will install this v5.04. Wonder if updates are still available for it. Either that or I disable the SATA controller, which I have no idea how and don't wish to because I don't like the feeling of something missing.

Or I physically plug out the SATA cable.

I just realised my previous post was my 500th post. I have blogged so much crap! May this blog live forever!

I experienced my first hiccup with Vista just now when my Hamachi could not enable the [virtual] network adaptor. Did a fresh reinstall and it worked. There wass a slight lag at the menu when I first opened up Generals, although the game itself was alright. Maybe because I used 800x600 low settings.

Tiberian Sun was the first strategy game I played, introduced to me by my primary school friends [wow there was like, six years back!], and I pretty much enjoyed it. Ever since I had been a CnC fan, hence my email address haha.

I still remember back in those days my mother had rather strict controls on my playing computer games, so I would wake up very early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to play, because she would be out at the market for at least an hour hahaha.

Later the Firestorm expansion came out, and got me all excited. Helped my good friend buy a copy at the *ahem* shop opposite my house [At that time the market rate was $8 for one cd, $15 for two, bought together with my friend, saved 50cents each ha]. At that time the game was rather popular among my classmates, so we spent alot of time talking about it.

Early secondary school days another CnC game came out, Red Alert 2. I remembered wondering why the name Westwood Studios was gone and replaced with EA, but I did not really know the story until I came across Wikipedia. Anyway my gaming experience went up to a new level as my classmates and I would meet at LAN shops to play. Usually we played the map Arctic Circle [because it was the only 8-player map?], and even formed alliances or stategies to gang bang those we don't like first lol. We came up with very interesting rules then, like no one is allowed to use France [because its Grand Cannon was too powerful], and also 30-45 minute truces so we could build up our forces.

I did not play the next game, Generals, because I was still using that Pentium 3 450Mhz then. My first encounter with that game was during a LAN session, and I remembered I was one of the first to be killed, because the gameplay was completely changed and differed from the previous CnC games so much so that I don't know how to play at all.

Along the way we also played first person shooters like Counter-Strike and Battlefield. Then all of the sudden the trend shifted to Warcraft and DotA and MMORPGs, which I don't play at all, so I was immediately ostracised.

Wow I digressed too much. Actually all I wanted to say was that the sequel to Tiberian Sun, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars has hit our shores. The launch at Lido was apparently overwhelmingly crowded with hardcore fans eagerly wanting to grab the game plus all the free gifts.

What about me? Well initially when I read about this game was in development [that was last year I think, when I surfed Wikipedia during one of the computing lessons :p] I was very excited about it, simply because I liked Tiberian Sun alot. Its a different developer now, but EA promised to keep the game as close to previous CnC games as possible.

Last month a demo for the game was available for download, so I tried it out. However having played that I find the game only quite alright; somehow I just don't like it as much as previous games. I can't exactly place my finger on any particular aspect, but I suspect its the overall feel of the game. It doesn't bring back the fun I had when playing Sun.

The new game is abit too sophiscated, unlike Tiberian Sun or Red Alert 2 where everything was much simpler.

I think again, maybe its because the game is abit too similar to other games.

Then I think again, maybe its because I am older now. Last time I had alot of friends whom I could talk about the game with, like how to complete a particular mission or which unit was better etc. There is no one I can talk with now.

Then I think again, maybe its because I have played too much games.

I may be too quick to pass the judgement, since I have only played the demo and not the actual one.

After so much trouble and time I finally got Vista installed. About reading and hearing about all the bugs and problems and whatnot, I am glad to say I have not experienced any of those. Yet.



Initially it was a "wow" because of the visual effects. But later it became "chey" because otherwise there is really nothing new about it.



That is the glassy effect on the sides of windows. Looks pretty cool, but apparently that simple effect itself requires a rather powerful graphics card.

Perhaps the only thing that I really had fun with was the Sidebar, where you place Gadgets, or tiny programs on the side of the desktop. The ones that came with Vista were not fun. I found pretty interesting ones on the Net:



There is one that tells me the weather in Singapore, one that tells me the weather on the eastern side of Singapore, and one that shows photos of traffic conditions of our expressways, all updated every few minutes. There are lots more, from stopwatches to mini notepads to even Sudoku games.

Performance wise, it runs decently on my computer, perhaps because I have packed it with enough RAM. But booting up takes a much longer time compared to XP. Games run with not much difference as in XP, although loading seems a little bit longer than usual.

To conclude, from a consumer's point of view, Vista is not a must have.

Yesterday was my last day at work! Finally!

After three months of endless slogging and another 1 week plus of dragging, I finally worked for the last time at that store yesterday afternoon.

As if heaven is out to play me, the manager was transferred to another store and a new manager, the one ofrom the store at the nearby MRT station, was transferred here. Apparently she is much better than the one who left. I only had a few hours of interaction with her, so I could not pass any judgement.

The new manager actually asked me to work another day today, because there is a shortage of staff. I went to the schedule to check; oh the one doing the morning shift took a day off today, perhaps to take advantage of the fact that there is a new guy working. After some consideration I still decided not to. Seriously had enough. Besides the multi-tasking auntie colleague is back today, so should be no problem.

There was no farewell or whatsoever yesterday. The most was a simple "Take care ah!" from the old auntie who took over me for the overnight shift.

[To sidetrack a little, it turned out that the old auntie did not turn up on Friday because she went off to Malacca; a close relative was sick and admitted into ICU etc. Well I was never angry with her; she's a very nice person. I was angry with the manager for not having enough staff on hand to handle last minute situations. There was supposed to be two person doing overnight, not one.]

I have learnt quite alot during my three months of work; that will be one post by itself.

Yesterday afternoon my mother called me asking if I have any friends in Taiwan. Immediately I know why she asked that. My Vista is here!

Having read the forums [again] I knew what to expect; a postman turning up at my house to pass a parcel that comes from Taiwan, which consists of a big brown envelope holding two discs inside.

I have not decided when to install Vista. Most probably at a later time.

I am going to make sure that next Tuesday will be my last day. I have had enough.

Everyday I reach the store to get scolded by the colleague doing the morning shift because I arrived on time. (I'm supposed to reach early to take over her, so she can go home earlier. Then she herself can arrive like half an hour after her working hours started.) Then every night I always have to wait well past my working hours for the one doing the overnight shift to take over from me, because they always come late.

Then there are times like today when the person taking over me did not even come, so I had to wait till 1am for someone from another store to come and relieve me. I was told 1am, so I told me father to fetch me home at 1am. Then i waited till 1.15am, before I decided to call that store if that person was coming. At 1.15am he was at his store saying he was going to come.

So by the time he reached, and checked that everything was in place, and I was allowed to go, it was already 2am. My father, having wasted an hour waiting for me, was angry, scolding me and saying I should not have asked him to come at 1am if I was not allowed to go at 1am.

Coincidentally, the area manager called some time after midnight, and was surprised I was alone and from the afternoon shift and was waiting for someone from another store to relieve me. So he asked why the store always seemed so short of staff.

I think I should be the one asking why the bloody store is so short of staff. I, a bloody part-timer, is working a bloody full six days a week. I had already asked to quit last week, but because the auntie colleague was going back to Malaysia, she asked me to help my boss out another week, which I agreed on her account. (I had actually anticipated this from earlier experience, which is why I asked to quit at an earlier date; to allow for a buffer)

I could not argue with the area manager, because a customer came halfway through the conversation. When I picked up the phone again he was gone, and he never called back. Luckily he didn't. I was going to erupt then.

I clearly asked my boss if this week would be my last week, and she agreed. Then yesterday she smsed me (wah, don't even dare to face me) to ask me help out another week. 也是她说，过了这个礼拜我就不用做了，现在她又叫我做多一个礼拜。好咯，什么都是她说，我什么都不用说了。

I rejected her immediately, saying I can at most help out one or two days. Today's schedule came out, and I was scheduled to work next Monday and Tuesday, after which from Wednesday onwards, the auntie colleague will be back.

In the past few days at least three people have applied for a job in the store, with another two (one of them is ex staff I think) applying today. But I still don't see their names anywhere in the schedule, which I wondered why. I still remembered in my case, I was asked to turn up for work immediately the following day, after I applied. Why can't they do that?

This work has made me realise just how inconsiderate people can be towards others. They can pass you a cash register without a single $10 bill and leaving you to die in hell when a customer passes you a $50 bill for a New Paper, because they have already knocked off and don't care how you are going to survive eight hours with nothing but only $50 bills and 5cents coins in your register.

They can happily sit in the storeroom reading magazines munching on hot piping sandwiches while you are outside at the counter placing a customer's purchases into plastic bags, mental calculating how much change to give back, apologising to another customer's enquiry why there are no more Gulp cups left, and getting panicked because the queue was reaching the door.

So now that I finished this bloody post its already 3.15am, just as I finished my dinner/breakfast/supper.

It has been a long time since there are three people working the afternoon shift. Work is so much more relaxing when there are three people working, because there is at least one person standing at the counter at all times, so I-who-do-not-want-to-touch-that-damn-cash-register can run around doing stock up.

Tomorrow will still be ok because I have someone working with me. The challenge will be Friday and Sunday, my supposedly last day of work.

I still have no clear idea what I should take in university. Some ideas yes, but the exact course and university, no. Maybe that is because I have not yet decided what I want to do as a career.

And I still have not decided whether I want to apply for a scholarship or not. Not that I can go for any with my results, but I need the money. However the application process (read: essay) and the selection process (read again: interview) is seriously putting me off.

For now I am more inclined towards applying for financial aid instead, but I have a few days to consider before the only scholarship I am applying for, if I am doing so, closes on the 23rd.

All the talk about going with your heart and going with your mind and go for your dreams etc, its so much easier to say than do.