oops. i haven't posted in a whole 12 days!
here's a wrap up on what i've been up to, the little imp.
since my last post...surprise surprise! i've had had about 8 or so presentations!! yeah, nothing to be excited about. first i must admit my shock at the naivety of some of the exchange students here. take for example, one of the presentations for a class to design a product for the elderly. one main point was raised by this guy, whom we shall call A. he claims that the elderly are resistant to learning new technology and use the keyboard, and his product is a high-tech tv like thingy that allows one to make phone calls, video calls, chat, twitter like features and other online social networking site features. my question here is: don't u think your product is contradicting your claim? if that is the case, how can you expect it to sell well, or before we even question that, how can you expect your targeted users to even want to use it? puzzles me.
we also had another presentation on Topics on Japan (TOJ). my group did on Mannerism in Japan, and as our motto dictates, we're out to have fun. so we did. we presented it in a gameshow style whereby random classmates (u are allowed to doubt the definition of RANDOM, considering that i came up with the idea *wink wink*) are selected to represent team A and B respectively, and to answer the questions that yours truly came up with. for those of u who know me, i am probably not known for coming up with simple questions but i decided to be nice this time and i actually came up with moderate questions. japan has made me a nicer guy. RANT WARNING: the previous group took too much freaking time (not to mention their horrendously dry content and some even had a really pathetic presentation style) so we ended up with about 2/3 of our allocated time. THANKS. not one to back away from challenges, i'm most glad to say that our group rose to the occasion (the AC way) and i believe it was a well received one :D
my next presentation (i tend to overlook minor presentations) would be the long anticipated industrial analysis competition held within my laboratory and conducted at Hakone. you could expect how fun it was. before the actual presentation, we had a terrible 2 weeks of working till way past midnight daily to collect information blablabla. if u don't understand the pain, try looking up for study journals, magazines, scholastic papers...etc. the catch is, do that in japanese. not exactly the easiest of tasks, even for someone who likes using the japanese language such as myself. when the dust settled, we produced (miraculously) a piece of work i would rate as 52/100. my job, besides researching on the articles, was to plan the project flow i.e. the logic of our project. my 2 teammates would be doing the bulk of the research and also the powerpoint presentation. on a side note, we had the least number of people (growl). the night before the presentation, we had a good kaiseki dinner (pics will not be provided here, check out my facebook albums!), followed by a nice onsen (hot spring) bath. my fren, ken, heard some girls' voices from the guys' bath and he tried to peek to no avail. awwww. try again next time, ken :D next up was karaoke (muaahahahaha) and u'll be surprised to learn that our professor joined us for all these activities. amazing. this was followed by a party till 3 am (we played plenty of games such as saboteur, cockroach poker) and everyone knocked out. some of those guys got really drunk, but thankfully, i controlled myself and i was sober. very sober. got up the next day to a nice buffet breakfast and *drumroll* here comes the real thing. i'll skip the details and go straight to the result, cos that's what u're waiting to hear (read) and that's what i'm dying to boast/brag about.
WE BAGGED THE TOP PRIZE AND BEAT THE OTHER GROUPS BY AROUND 20 POINTS EACH!!!
as a result, my group's getting a treat to high class sushi at GINZA soon :D
alright, time to end things on a high note. GOODNIGHT!
i'll continue another day hehehehe
2009年6月27日土曜日
2009年6月15日月曜日
am i having fun indeed...
I am in a bad mood.
And while yes, it might be due to my mood swing tendency tonight, it is largely to do with my project group mates and a series of events recently.
Before we go into the bashin'n'thrashin (of me or anyone else), let's take a look at my duties in the project group. For simplicity's sake, let me just use ONE of my project groups as an example.
QL's Duties:
- Create project flow
- Oversee project flow
- Lead discussion
- Designate duties
- Research
- Edit report/presentation
- Present
- Teach anything the others do not understand
- Discipline project members
- Resolve conflicts/complaints
- Answer to any doubts/opinions by others
- Conduct survey
- Design survey
Others' duties (a consolidation)
- Follow deadline
- Design product (draw)
- Present by reading from the powerpoint slides
- Try to join in the discussion hopefully by doing something other than repeating what QL said
- Conduct survey
- Prepare a draft of a report that will have 80% corrected anyway due to poor language
Does it sound fair? To be fair to me, I allocated the tasks to others such as designing the survey (and credits to one of them who tried her best to give me a decent draft). Unfortunately, due to reasons whatsoever, they were not delivered. In fact, most of the time, I find myself doing extra to cover for the others. Now you might be wondering, why am I being so nice? The QL you know is probably a much more ruthless guy who will make sure something unpleasant happens to anyone in the project group who even dares to attempt such an act. But keep in mind that I am here on a short-term exchange, and hence, I do not see the point in losing my temper over this and becoming an asshole. Moreover, while I do not mind teaching on the pretext that I already understand the concept myself, I do not like it when there is no effort shown and mere requests of "please be specific and correct the mistakes" are made. That sounds rather to me to be "Please do my work. I am not needed in the group. Please kick me out." Angsty QL.
Updates include people submitting work at the last minute and when I provide feedback that it is wrong, they tend to want to blame me for it. because i did not give feedback earlier. because i did not comment earlier. Well, DUH. When the work is submitted to me 12 hours before the deadline, how am I supposed to have commented earlier? When explanation was provided a week ago, and a public "Any questions or doubts to clear up?" went unchallenged, I am supposed to be on my heels for one whole week to look out for any doubts and answer them immediately like a 24-hour hotline would? Frankly, it is a case of a nice guy turning into a convenient tool. And quite hilariously, I meet with people offering an argument of how they are really busy. Well yes indeed, people have their capacities. BUT, you-who-is-taking-5-classes is expecting me-who-is-taking-10-classes to father your part of the project, that is absurd. The only salvation is that after being corrected, my groupmates will take pains to correct their work, even if it means going late into the night (a trait I highly suspect I am guilty of too).
Perhaps you might say I am asking for too much. Perhaps the argument that "I am not QL, therefore I cannot" will be put forth. But please try to think about it and for goodness' sake, stop using me as a lousy excuse because QL was not born with all these abilities and ample help and time was given prior to task allocations.
The happier part of this entry is, unsurprisingly, on karaoke. On a totally random day at a totally random timing, I skipped part of my group work for one of the projects and will be making up for it by doing an individual fieldwork for that part to try to cheer a friend up (only to find out that while I have been keeping people in my mind, others have obviously not been doing the same). Oops, no more venturing into the dark ranting side. So anyway, karaoke!!
Sang a few songs, and I tried the ugakara system, whereby you pit your karaoke score for that particular song against everyone else who uses that system in Japan! I won't be holding back, but instead be proudly and arrogantly and snobbishly boast that I got into the top 4 for Kobukuro's [White Days]. Perhaps it might be that people have not been singing that song much, but I guess a score of nearly 89 is a score to be proud of :) Time to aim for higher heights!
Japan really has interesting (or in some ways, odd) functions. Besides the normal 高精度採点 (high quality scoring), they also had the グラビア採点 (gravure scoring). For the latter, what happens is that instead of the usual movie they use, it becomes a movie of a gravure model (in other words, a sexy but not necessarily pretty woman). If you sing well, you will be treated to a nice (?) video of her along the beach or some random place, depending on the theme. However, if you were to be musically challenged, you will find the video getting CENSORED (ROFL). We tried to hit a score of 100 just to see what it will get us but unfortunately, the highest I could go was nearly 90 (my score peaked at 99 at one point in time!!). Another interesting observation is that irregarding our vocal abilities, singing English songs seem to be able to yield a higher score. I wonder why *grinz*
Ok, time for project research. It's on DENTURES this time round. Cya folks
And while yes, it might be due to my mood swing tendency tonight, it is largely to do with my project group mates and a series of events recently.
Before we go into the bashin'n'thrashin (of me or anyone else), let's take a look at my duties in the project group. For simplicity's sake, let me just use ONE of my project groups as an example.
QL's Duties:
- Create project flow
- Oversee project flow
- Lead discussion
- Designate duties
- Research
- Edit report/presentation
- Present
- Teach anything the others do not understand
- Discipline project members
- Resolve conflicts/complaints
- Answer to any doubts/opinions by others
- Conduct survey
- Design survey
Others' duties (a consolidation)
- Follow deadline
- Design product (draw)
- Present by reading from the powerpoint slides
- Try to join in the discussion hopefully by doing something other than repeating what QL said
- Conduct survey
- Prepare a draft of a report that will have 80% corrected anyway due to poor language
Does it sound fair? To be fair to me, I allocated the tasks to others such as designing the survey (and credits to one of them who tried her best to give me a decent draft). Unfortunately, due to reasons whatsoever, they were not delivered. In fact, most of the time, I find myself doing extra to cover for the others. Now you might be wondering, why am I being so nice? The QL you know is probably a much more ruthless guy who will make sure something unpleasant happens to anyone in the project group who even dares to attempt such an act. But keep in mind that I am here on a short-term exchange, and hence, I do not see the point in losing my temper over this and becoming an asshole. Moreover, while I do not mind teaching on the pretext that I already understand the concept myself, I do not like it when there is no effort shown and mere requests of "please be specific and correct the mistakes" are made. That sounds rather to me to be "Please do my work. I am not needed in the group. Please kick me out." Angsty QL.
Updates include people submitting work at the last minute and when I provide feedback that it is wrong, they tend to want to blame me for it. because i did not give feedback earlier. because i did not comment earlier. Well, DUH. When the work is submitted to me 12 hours before the deadline, how am I supposed to have commented earlier? When explanation was provided a week ago, and a public "Any questions or doubts to clear up?" went unchallenged, I am supposed to be on my heels for one whole week to look out for any doubts and answer them immediately like a 24-hour hotline would? Frankly, it is a case of a nice guy turning into a convenient tool. And quite hilariously, I meet with people offering an argument of how they are really busy. Well yes indeed, people have their capacities. BUT, you-who-is-taking-5-classes is expecting me-who-is-taking-10-classes to father your part of the project, that is absurd. The only salvation is that after being corrected, my groupmates will take pains to correct their work, even if it means going late into the night (a trait I highly suspect I am guilty of too).
Perhaps you might say I am asking for too much. Perhaps the argument that "I am not QL, therefore I cannot" will be put forth. But please try to think about it and for goodness' sake, stop using me as a lousy excuse because QL was not born with all these abilities and ample help and time was given prior to task allocations.
The happier part of this entry is, unsurprisingly, on karaoke. On a totally random day at a totally random timing, I skipped part of my group work for one of the projects and will be making up for it by doing an individual fieldwork for that part to try to cheer a friend up (only to find out that while I have been keeping people in my mind, others have obviously not been doing the same). Oops, no more venturing into the dark ranting side. So anyway, karaoke!!
Sang a few songs, and I tried the ugakara system, whereby you pit your karaoke score for that particular song against everyone else who uses that system in Japan! I won't be holding back, but instead be proudly and arrogantly and snobbishly boast that I got into the top 4 for Kobukuro's [White Days]. Perhaps it might be that people have not been singing that song much, but I guess a score of nearly 89 is a score to be proud of :) Time to aim for higher heights!
Japan really has interesting (or in some ways, odd) functions. Besides the normal 高精度採点 (high quality scoring), they also had the グラビア採点 (gravure scoring). For the latter, what happens is that instead of the usual movie they use, it becomes a movie of a gravure model (in other words, a sexy but not necessarily pretty woman). If you sing well, you will be treated to a nice (?) video of her along the beach or some random place, depending on the theme. However, if you were to be musically challenged, you will find the video getting CENSORED (ROFL). We tried to hit a score of 100 just to see what it will get us but unfortunately, the highest I could go was nearly 90 (my score peaked at 99 at one point in time!!). Another interesting observation is that irregarding our vocal abilities, singing English songs seem to be able to yield a higher score. I wonder why *grinz*
Ok, time for project research. It's on DENTURES this time round. Cya folks
2009年6月8日月曜日
sen-chan!
Cookie Crumb White Chocolate from Disney. Courtesy of Jiahui
Guess how much this cost?
Looking young(er)Sen-chan is what some of my Japanese friends are calling me.
Anything special about it? Not really.
You see, in the Japanese context, you would refer to others as (name)-san and that's about it, right? WRONG. In fact, (name)-san is a polite way of addressing someone, who is often a stranger or someone who commands some respect. Other ways include (name)-sama, (name)-dono, and of course, (name)-chan.
Now comes the next question, why "sen"-chan? Like, I'm QL, and there's no apparent connection to "sen", is there? Actually, QL = "senri" in Japanese (I refuse to provide any other pronunciations) and hence, "sen"-chan. Think of it like "oppa" in Korean, just that you're adding a name in front.
I've been going on and on bout this, so you're probably wondering, right....so what's up with "sen-chan"? I don't really know, but personally, I find it a lot friendlier to call someone by his/her nickname, or in short, just a personalized name. However, the effects are very different depending on who's calling me "sen-chan". Let's look at the following cases...
1) Cute Japanese girl around my age group
Effect: Feels good. Pretty damn good.
2) Nice Japanese guy around my age group
Effect: A warm fuzzy feeling gushes around, but if said with a sneaky smile, evokes a sense of uneasiness.
3) Foreign Friend (what people would refer to here as gaijin)
Effect: WEIRD. Perhaps it's the accent. Or maybe its the intonation. Or it could have been the look. In any case, I personally don't advise it unless you can do it the way it's being practised here by the cute Japanese girls
4) Others
Effect: I don't really care that much :p
Bah. I don't even know why I'm typing this in such an inquisitive tone today! Perhaps I'm just sick of doing MORE research hehe. BUT!!! If my research project goes well, I'm getting a treat to HIGH CLASS SUSHI AT GINZA from my prof! Now THAT's motivation :P
Let's see...I met up with Ayako on Sunday, which is an amazing feat by itself. This is simply because I first knew her in Singapore when she came over to work as a waitress at a restaurant that I frequented. From then on we became friends (we = XY, Ayako, Me) and went out for dinner on a couple'f occasions. After some time, she came back to pursue a career in Kyoto, Japan. Anyway, back to topic. We went to Yokohama, Shinagawa, Harajuku (people are going to start noticing that I've been frequenting Harajuku a lot...) and back to Yokohama in time for her to catch the Shinkansen. It was great meeting up and catching up :D Since what we talked bout is mostly personal stuff, I shan't write it here, but instead, let's recollect what we ate.
First, we had a light snack (it was her lunch) at Chowder's. As you can collect from the name, the place sells soup. I had Fire Tomato Bisque with tomato rice and water while she had the soup of the day (spinach, not with pork ribs though :P) Following which, it was a frantic wave of shopping at Harajuku (on a weekend). As usual, we saw the cosplayers outside Meiji Shrine. There're plenty of X-Japan cosplayers this weekend though...I wonder why...I think she had a great time cos she spent a bomb on the clothes (chuckle). I guess I can start bringing people around Harajuku soon :D For those of you who like shoes, they're selling at 2 pairs for 3000 yen, just for your information. *skips the shopping part and jumps straight to dinner cos i needa do research soon...poor time management*
Dinner was at yokohama - SUSHI! Ok, be prepared for a barrage of Japanese terms now, this was our dinner menu
1) Ichinichi-gentei-20-shoku Kinkai-nigiri (includes 10 sushi which I'm too lazy to list)
2) Kaisen (Seafood) Salad
3) Kani-jiru (Crab Miso Soup) - they used a whole crab for this
4) Waka...erm i forgot. Something tempura
5) Buta-abura-nigiri
6) Oshinko
7) Matcha Warabi Mochi
I'll love to upload the pics, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day!!! It's in my cellphone though :P
Ok with that, I'll end this entry (abruptly)
2 pics at the top to show that I'm doing well :D
2009年6月5日金曜日
work work work
The REAL Melon Pan
Taken with VIP after performanceWoah so it seems that I've gone missing for a whole week!
Believe me, it's not so much a matter of MIA or it boiling down to sloth. Rather *gasp* I have been STUDYING. Wondering how many people who read this just puked or burst out laughing...
Let's recollect my week.
Monday - Meeting for project 1 (I have somehow assumed the role of leader), meeting for project 2 (Again, I am the leader of this group as well), meeting for project 3 (Thankfully I have ikemen tutor Eiji who is leading this group). The day ends after doing 2 reports for presentation and submission on Thursday. Might I mention, in Japanese o_O This tiring day was kind of brought to life with a great dinner though, whereby i paid 1030 yen (ouch) for something 3-4 cups of rice, GIGANTIC chicken cutlet, deep fried prawn, fish, oyster, 2 small side dishes and a small bowl of soup. AWESOME.
Tuesday - Presentation for Project 2 (2 presentations are expected). Well, Hacchan (girl), Yuuchan (guy) and Kim-chan (guy) did their part for the project so in that sense, it's a massive sigh of relief and I needn't die. Then again, I was tasked to do my part, translate for them, give them a summary of the whole project, design the flow, monitor their presentation material, prepare the presentation material and also handle the Q&A. Fair distribution of work eh? *chuckles* Went to meet Jiahui after that, and we had some nice shopping in Harajuku. Had some crepes (weren't they nice, jh?) and we fought off the temptations lingering in the air and around us all the way till we went to Hanjiro (2nd-hand shop) whereby we got some neat stuff for a pretty decent price. Shan't disclose what we bought but jh was nice enough to let me have the points to use for my next trip to Hanjiro :D Oh, and she got me something from Disneysea. WHEE! Dinner was at an Izakaya, where we probably scared some Japanese dudes by speaking in English. There was this Japanese couple who're badmouthing us (I bet they thought we couldn't speak Japanese) but oh well, I wasn't in a mood to do anything bout that.
Wednesday - Topics on Japan class, which was pretty much a breeze since Satou-sensei is REALLY nice. She's like the reincarnation of a Buddha who's always smiley and gentle and just somehow, she has this really positive air around her which is great. Had lunch with Mingfeng, my high school classmate who has since lost (a very limited amount of) his lameness. As another friend would probably testify, mf is LAME SHIT. But he's still my friend :D Lunch for me was Tatsu-Maguro, Deep Fried Tuna marinated in Soy sauce, Japanese wine and one more that I forgot. He had Maguro-butsu (thick-sliced tuna) with seaweed and NATTOU. Kudos for finishing everything (most of my friends can't stand nattou). We went on to walk a little around my school before finishing our little tour at the nearby garden (and small lake). Nice scenery. Nice weather. What more can you ask for? It was a pity he couldn't get a shot of the HUGE crows that will beat even a stray cat in Singapore hands down. After we parted ways, I rushed back to school for another project meeting with Eiji. Seems like our project is hitting the end of the road, and we needa dig ourselves out of it via another road. BAH. Shall not elaborate on it. This wonderful Wednesday continues with a performance during the TISA (Tokyo Tech international student association, if I'm not wrong) Welcome Party. (For those of you who know me on MSN and other sources) My host family from the Tochigi Homestay Program came all the way over to Tokyo (that's a whopping 2-3 hours by express train) to support us for the event!! This time round, yours truly has chosen Kobukuro's [Kazamidori] as the piece and quite thankfully, it was well received (and I got some tips plus a bottle of wine as my reward) :D Oh, and a rather unexciting piece of news...I was introduced to the VIP for the event and ended up getting invited to perform the same piece for the opening of a new building of the school *cough* Unfortunately, this great night ended off with more school work due to my commitments the next day...
Thursday - Presentation for project N (I've lost count!!), in Japanese. I so wanted to shoot myself in the foot cos to be perfectly honest, my Japanese ain't that perfect to make a good presentation. Daily conversations, chatting up strangers, making friends...blablabla. These, I can manage with great pleasure (and to a certain extent, ease). Presenting in Japanese presents (hurhurhur) another whole new challenge in itself. Comes in TEAMWORK. Unlike the other presentation group, we not only split the preparation work pretty well, we also split the presentation work relatively well too. As a result, I believe our presentation flow was probably smoother and it actually turned out to be rather good. Perhaps it is a great time to mention one thing good about groupwork in Japan. Unlike in Singapore, whereby inter-group cooperation is rare or even getting endangered, we actually help one another here in Japan. I'll talk more bout this in time to come. Thursday is also Seminar Day. This week's case study was prepared by Takashima-san and Yoshikoshi-san, and as would be expected, it was INSANELY thick and purely in Japanese. With them leading the discussion, it also ended up to be a breathtaking 3h30min no-break-in-between session but I will be frank and admit that it was most fruitful.
Friday - I couldn't take the lack of sleep and over-working anymore and actually fell asleep before 12am on Thursday *gasp* Anyway, I got up early today to finish my 35-page reading for today's class, before rushing over to realize that only 5 of us turned up for it. Apparently...people don't like to attend classes on rainy days *shrugs* Again, I found myself actually concentrating in class and participating actively, something I would humbly admit to be lacking in my Singapore days *sweats* After this class, I wearsomely dragged my feet to the next class on E-commerce. Special mention goes to Guy (a friend of mine is called Guy) who offered me a mini Snickers to refresh my tired mind (and body). MMMMM. YUMMIE. Point is, I survived this class and after another awesome trip to the supermarket (call me uncle/auntie QL!!), I made myself a nice dinner with lots of meat, vege, soup, noodles, juice but just falling short of taking pictures of it. Supper follows with the REAL Melon-Pan, with rockmelon paste, sugar, fresh whipped cream in it. NICE. Danish Cheese Bread is ready and waiting to be consumed, and I'm moving on to my 4th liter of fluid today.
That's all folks, Special Correspondent QL reporting from Japan. Time to sleep~~~zzz
Let's recollect my week.
Monday - Meeting for project 1 (I have somehow assumed the role of leader), meeting for project 2 (Again, I am the leader of this group as well), meeting for project 3 (Thankfully I have ikemen tutor Eiji who is leading this group). The day ends after doing 2 reports for presentation and submission on Thursday. Might I mention, in Japanese o_O This tiring day was kind of brought to life with a great dinner though, whereby i paid 1030 yen (ouch) for something 3-4 cups of rice, GIGANTIC chicken cutlet, deep fried prawn, fish, oyster, 2 small side dishes and a small bowl of soup. AWESOME.
Tuesday - Presentation for Project 2 (2 presentations are expected). Well, Hacchan (girl), Yuuchan (guy) and Kim-chan (guy) did their part for the project so in that sense, it's a massive sigh of relief and I needn't die. Then again, I was tasked to do my part, translate for them, give them a summary of the whole project, design the flow, monitor their presentation material, prepare the presentation material and also handle the Q&A. Fair distribution of work eh? *chuckles* Went to meet Jiahui after that, and we had some nice shopping in Harajuku. Had some crepes (weren't they nice, jh?) and we fought off the temptations lingering in the air and around us all the way till we went to Hanjiro (2nd-hand shop) whereby we got some neat stuff for a pretty decent price. Shan't disclose what we bought but jh was nice enough to let me have the points to use for my next trip to Hanjiro :D Oh, and she got me something from Disneysea. WHEE! Dinner was at an Izakaya, where we probably scared some Japanese dudes by speaking in English. There was this Japanese couple who're badmouthing us (I bet they thought we couldn't speak Japanese) but oh well, I wasn't in a mood to do anything bout that.
Wednesday - Topics on Japan class, which was pretty much a breeze since Satou-sensei is REALLY nice. She's like the reincarnation of a Buddha who's always smiley and gentle and just somehow, she has this really positive air around her which is great. Had lunch with Mingfeng, my high school classmate who has since lost (a very limited amount of) his lameness. As another friend would probably testify, mf is LAME SHIT. But he's still my friend :D Lunch for me was Tatsu-Maguro, Deep Fried Tuna marinated in Soy sauce, Japanese wine and one more that I forgot. He had Maguro-butsu (thick-sliced tuna) with seaweed and NATTOU. Kudos for finishing everything (most of my friends can't stand nattou). We went on to walk a little around my school before finishing our little tour at the nearby garden (and small lake). Nice scenery. Nice weather. What more can you ask for? It was a pity he couldn't get a shot of the HUGE crows that will beat even a stray cat in Singapore hands down. After we parted ways, I rushed back to school for another project meeting with Eiji. Seems like our project is hitting the end of the road, and we needa dig ourselves out of it via another road. BAH. Shall not elaborate on it. This wonderful Wednesday continues with a performance during the TISA (Tokyo Tech international student association, if I'm not wrong) Welcome Party. (For those of you who know me on MSN and other sources) My host family from the Tochigi Homestay Program came all the way over to Tokyo (that's a whopping 2-3 hours by express train) to support us for the event!! This time round, yours truly has chosen Kobukuro's [Kazamidori] as the piece and quite thankfully, it was well received (and I got some tips plus a bottle of wine as my reward) :D Oh, and a rather unexciting piece of news...I was introduced to the VIP for the event and ended up getting invited to perform the same piece for the opening of a new building of the school *cough* Unfortunately, this great night ended off with more school work due to my commitments the next day...
Thursday - Presentation for project N (I've lost count!!), in Japanese. I so wanted to shoot myself in the foot cos to be perfectly honest, my Japanese ain't that perfect to make a good presentation. Daily conversations, chatting up strangers, making friends...blablabla. These, I can manage with great pleasure (and to a certain extent, ease). Presenting in Japanese presents (hurhurhur) another whole new challenge in itself. Comes in TEAMWORK. Unlike the other presentation group, we not only split the preparation work pretty well, we also split the presentation work relatively well too. As a result, I believe our presentation flow was probably smoother and it actually turned out to be rather good. Perhaps it is a great time to mention one thing good about groupwork in Japan. Unlike in Singapore, whereby inter-group cooperation is rare or even getting endangered, we actually help one another here in Japan. I'll talk more bout this in time to come. Thursday is also Seminar Day. This week's case study was prepared by Takashima-san and Yoshikoshi-san, and as would be expected, it was INSANELY thick and purely in Japanese. With them leading the discussion, it also ended up to be a breathtaking 3h30min no-break-in-between session but I will be frank and admit that it was most fruitful.
Friday - I couldn't take the lack of sleep and over-working anymore and actually fell asleep before 12am on Thursday *gasp* Anyway, I got up early today to finish my 35-page reading for today's class, before rushing over to realize that only 5 of us turned up for it. Apparently...people don't like to attend classes on rainy days *shrugs* Again, I found myself actually concentrating in class and participating actively, something I would humbly admit to be lacking in my Singapore days *sweats* After this class, I wearsomely dragged my feet to the next class on E-commerce. Special mention goes to Guy (a friend of mine is called Guy) who offered me a mini Snickers to refresh my tired mind (and body). MMMMM. YUMMIE. Point is, I survived this class and after another awesome trip to the supermarket (call me uncle/auntie QL!!), I made myself a nice dinner with lots of meat, vege, soup, noodles, juice but just falling short of taking pictures of it. Supper follows with the REAL Melon-Pan, with rockmelon paste, sugar, fresh whipped cream in it. NICE. Danish Cheese Bread is ready and waiting to be consumed, and I'm moving on to my 4th liter of fluid today.
That's all folks, Special Correspondent QL reporting from Japan. Time to sleep~~~zzz
2009年5月28日木曜日
THE TREBLE
BARCA HAS DONE IT!!!
THE FIRST TREBLE TO BE WON BY A SPANISH TEAM!!!
VIVA LA BARCA
and I MUST take a dig at the man utd fans
do you know how many of your fellow loser "fans" logged off and pretended to go to bed when they saw barca leading with 20 minutes to go? SHAME ON YOU FOR DESERTING YOUR TEAM. for those who stayed on and rallied for your team, good on ya!
i thought man utd coulda done more, but i guess that first goal really shook them (and shook us up too). 57% predicted a man utd victory on soccernet? HA. that's football ;)
wheee time to prepare for project meetings in sch~~
today's gonna be sucha a great day~
THE FIRST TREBLE TO BE WON BY A SPANISH TEAM!!!
VIVA LA BARCA
and I MUST take a dig at the man utd fans
do you know how many of your fellow loser "fans" logged off and pretended to go to bed when they saw barca leading with 20 minutes to go? SHAME ON YOU FOR DESERTING YOUR TEAM. for those who stayed on and rallied for your team, good on ya!
i thought man utd coulda done more, but i guess that first goal really shook them (and shook us up too). 57% predicted a man utd victory on soccernet? HA. that's football ;)
wheee time to prepare for project meetings in sch~~
today's gonna be sucha a great day~
2009年5月27日水曜日
SF continues
QL in his newly acquired Japan National Football Team JerseyWhat is SF? u might be asking, and it's definitely not Science Fiction or Street Fighter, for you old school gamer friends of mine out there :D
Yes, it's the H1N1 Swine Flu. News updates reveal that Singapore has its first case of swine flu (from SMU apparently). Hate to hear that, and I must admit I am pretty darn worried for the people over there. So, it's the usual thingy, take care of your personal hygiene, eat healthy food, drink lotsa water, take lotsa vitamin C, refrain from mouth contact...etc (refer to my previous post for a longer list hahaha)
Speaking of which, I think my methods worked in nursing myself back to health. My sore throat's almost gone (save for that little bit of uneasiness that prevents me from singing...the falsetto part just won't come out now...gRRR). That's 2 weeks (and still counting) of abstinence from karaoke. YES, praise me! Sigh. Might I add, I didn't get to meet Miho as planned cos I thought it'll be better to stay home and nurse myself back to good health, just in case I did catch swine flu (which thankfully wasn't the case).
I still managed to squeeze some time out to bring my juniors from JSS and a Hong Kong friend around Shibuya and Harajuku though. Al beit, in a mask (LOL). It was really tempting though, since Ikimonogakari was having a concert at the CC Lemon Hall and I wanted to go (again). They're a Japanese pop/rock band, and while their songs ain't that epic, the guys and girls ain't super-hot-outta-this-world material, they have a special charm. Should we say...they feel close? It was like partying and just making merry at their concert, which was a great feeling :D We sang along and danced along with Kiyoe-chan leading (including the dancing part). DAMN. That Pugi-Ugi song is stuck in my head now!!! ARGHHHHHH
It's Champs League tonight (VIVA LA BARCA) BUT I DON'T HAVE IT AVAILABLE IN MY DORM!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
And I have school tomorrow so I won't be going to a pub to catch it. GROWL. Someone gimme access now pleasssse T_T
Oh well, while waiting for the match to start (are you nuts!?), I will be doing up my presentation slides and reports and research for erm...4-5 classes. Amazingly, I am actually pretty studious since coming to Japan. My profs (but more likely my classmates) will probably be the most surprised people besides my mum (chuckles). BUT (a big one this time)!! I've been having a good rest to recover from my flu-like symptoms and as a result, I'm behind my own schedule so I gotta buck up from now on. Sigh. No procrastination though, cos some how or other, I've ended up as leader for 4 project groups, with 3 other personal essay projects to complete. BAH.
At least mapping's settled. Thankfully enough, I managed to negotiate with my prof back in NUS and he's also willing to settle for a double compromise so that things become fair(er) to both of us. Guess this is part and parcel of the world, and win-win situations are really possible after all :) Good luck to all my other SEP friends who're battling with it though. Juniors, DO YOUR MAPPING WELL BEFORE YOU EMBARK
Ok, back to some serious work. Engine zenkai!
2009年5月25日月曜日
Voiceless days
As some of you may already know, I am having a *GASP* sore throat. Ok, still no swine flu (thankfully). I've missed...let me see...4 karaokes as a result of this (and 2 classes). Kinda amazing considering it's ME at issue, eh? Well, u gotta be a considerate citizen and do some precautionary measures cos after all, it ain't the first wave that we're afraid of, but rather the mutated second wave. I repeat, MUTATED second wave. Imagine a flu bug that's resistant to all current medicines and has an insanely high fatality rate (while retaining the easy-transmittance). Now, THAT's gonna hurt. And way more than the Spanish flu that many years ago.
BRRR, scary topics aside, it's time for QL's meal of the day! (hmmm when did this ever become a staple in my blog entries...). Ok, so we're gonna talk about dinner today! Today's menu consists of...
- 2 Cups of rice
- 1 large slab of chicken thigh
- teriyaki sauce
- cabbage
- egg
- japanese tea
and mixing em all...u get
- teriyaki chicken thigh don (XL) with cabbage
- egg soup with cabbage
Perhaps u might be thinking...QL you forgot to include the oil, silly u!!
BUT
I (proudly) say: "Besides the oil from the slab of chicken itself, I didn't use a single drop!"
hehe, pretty much been a health freak recently, in part also due to my bad throat T_T
I also got myself a football jersey (it IS football, stop calling it SOCCER) in preparation for the World Cup Asian Qualifiers match next month. MMM can't wait. AND a haircut cos the back was getting too thick AND I finally decided to shave off the goatie. GREAT. I now look like a kid. (hence the lack of narcissistic self-portraits in this entry).
Alright, time to turn in and recover my voice. GROWL. I happen to be the leader for erm...4 project groups this semester (some things don't really change...zzz) and without my voice now, I'm finding difficulty communicating with others (duh).
So there, GOODNIGHT!
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