Ways to De-stress

People nowadays are subjected to a lot of external pressures and stress, especially those living in the urbs. No matter who you are, where you live, what you do, is all somewhat affected by the drawbacks of stress.

I've my own methods of shaking off the stress, and I'd like to share with you here.

First thing comes into my mind is chill out with music.
As you know, music has been playing a big part in my life. Music is my drug, my ecstasy, my tranquiliser, etc, you name it.



Most songs I listen are instrumental-based, which can evoke the inner soul deep inside me. I felt comfortable, relaxed, calm when listening the music.

The songs I listen varies, depends on my mood.
When I'm feeling upset, distress, I'll play "Grief & Sorrow" from Naruto OST. It's a sad song, as the title indicates.
If I'm demoralised & demotivated, I'll tune into something livelier, such as "V3" from O2Jam.
Before I sleep, I will cleanse my mind with soft songs, such as "Whisper in the Dark" by Yanni and "Cristofori's Dream" by David Lanz.

I'm addicted to music, much like smokers adicted to cigs.

My alternative way to release all the stress is kicking a ball.



To me, a ball is the medium where I can unleash all the pressure.
I just focus all the negative thoughts I have, concentrate in my mind, and then release all of them when I hit the ball hard. The harder the kick, the more it releases, and the better it feels.

Oh yea, I also enjoy tackle others too. It really satisfies me when I made a successful tackle, especially a sliding tackle. Then again, it's also another form to exert the tensions into another medium, just that make sure dont injured the tackled guy. :P

I've been a good listener for my friends, so I expect the same treatment from them when I need someone over there. It's not that I demand something in return from them, but when you're feeling down, you really need someone trustworthy whom you can really count on, especially in keeping things private.



Besides talking bout the problem with fellow friends, I'd also like to write it out like in the blog, another method of expressions. I understand that not everyone agree with this move, as this reflects the negative thoughts in me, but for me this is a good practise to train my writings, thinkings and improve my mentality.

I think these 3 points covered all I wanted to say. Everyone has their own ways to do things, so I guess some may not like my methods here. If you have your own idea, why dont you share it here? ;)

TARC SPUS Prom Nite 2008

Disclaimer: This post is written out of abnormal mood. What you read here doesn't reflect my real standards, so please do not judge it as if you know me very well. Comments are still welcomed however.
A post written in a bad mood, of course it sounds nasty. >:)

My first time attending a prom, but it doesn't turn out like what I expected. In other words, a disappointment. It really kills off my mood. :(

I was so excited and looking forward to attend the prom, because I didnt have to chance to attend one during my high school days. My school is too poor to organise such exquisite event for students.

I'm going to the prom without partner, hoping that I could have one of my classmate be my partner. I invited her to the prom but she refuses because she want to go back to her home this weekend.
She turn out to the prom eventually, saying that many of her friends are going so she's tagging along.
I'm cool with it, in fact I'm pleased that she's going too. I wouldn't want to mess up this golden opportunity. ;)

Well-prepared.


I waited her and her friends near the entrance. She's very gorgeous in the gown, I didnt expect she looks so good.... O_o

Things went pretty well for me to this part, I lead them into the hall to be seated. I'm still the same nice and helpful guy there, except that I'm getting nervous and pulses keep increasing. Dont ask me why, I've told my mind treat the situation as cool and normal as possible, but the heartbeat ignored my order.
You know, when your heart beats fast, your rhythm will somewhat mess up so you might do some stupid things.

"Right, so I'm in the middle of the prom, yeah! Still yet to find a chance to dance with her lol.
Let it be an endless waltz~ gg.
This is my chance, so I'm gonna make it the day for both of us!

I wrote this when the event's starting.

Before we proceed to the entertainment part, we're asked to have our dinner at a nearby room. Everything looks fine, I've nothing much to complain bout the food except that the noodle isn't edible. Love the Secret Recipe cakes though.

Me, with lecturer Mr Low and Edmund.


Coursemates.


After the meal we went back to the hall. We took few shots before the program started.

Martin, Johnson, Cliff and Edmund.


Coursemates again.


The programs, I'd say it's bad. After a few songs suddenly pop out people from 8TV promoting Project SuperStar stuff. I didnt watch TV that frequently so I dunno anyone of them. Project SuperStar is basically another talent-reality show. I'm sick of these shows.

These "entertainers" talk too many craps, dragged the time too long until many of us lost patience watching the show. Pity those who dunno Mandarin, because those 8TV freaks keep speaking in mandarin without concerning the audiences. I understand 8TV is a mandarin-based channel, well cant they be more reasonable to cut the show shorter? They wasted more than half an hour making fool of themselves.
I'm not a fan of these stuffs, so please back-off. I can only lament my unluckiness have to bear with the freaky program.

At least, the program after that isn't that bad. I do enjoy the songs sang by one of the Talent Time night champion, really amazing voice and softly-sang. This is then I buff up my guts to ask her to have a dance with me.
To my dispair, she turn me down. :S

I've been reasonable not to force her because this will do no good for us, I just say if there's other suitable songs I'll ask her to dance with me again. I back off from the scene then.

That is when all the things turn from bad to worse.

As the performers playing more and more song, everyone is dancing on the dancefloor, having some fun times. I for one, found myself in an awkward position. I dont really have the feeling, the excitement, the mood to dance with the crowd.

Something is disturbing me, I dunno how to describe. P
erhaps is the songs doesn't suit my taste?
Perhaps is the crowd acted too wild?
Perhaps is the lightings too bright for the eyes?
Perhaps, there's something else running in my mind, blocked all the pathways to excitement?

I dunno what happen in me... Definitely not the best night. Sigh....
I'm blank and blur.
I dunno what should I do next.
Err.... speechless, numbness. (-__-")
This shouldnt happen but..... oh well.

Written in distraught mood, near the end of the event.

Saw her having fun with someone while I'm standing in the middle do nothing. I somewhat can understand the feeling of the characters in MVs, when they stand in the middle of dancing crowd, watching someone there, feeling down and low..... very upset. One of the example is "Love Comes Again" by DJ Tiesto, how irony....

Sigh.... I felt like being stabbed in the heart, the mind and the soul.
It's messed up.
It's really weird, the feeling, the emotion..... everything just not my taste.

My first prom, is a failure.

Regret? Nay.
Upset? Yea.
Angry? Nay.
Chances to come? Hell yeah!

Time to relax~

It's unusual for missing updating this blog for weeks, now that I've almost done with all the tasks, so I can relax and enjoy my time.

College life, is getting more upbeat, more fun to come, and also more pressure ahead.
Nevertheless, we still can squeeze out a little time to enjoy life, hanging out with friends, which I'm enjoying doing so. :)

Chinese New Year 2008 mark it's end on 22 Feb night. I went to Thean Hou Temple to celebrate the last day of CNY. I'm having the last test on the next day, so I'm 50-50 whether I wanna go there with family or not.
Turns out that it wasn't that bad after all. Had a satisfying Hainan cuisine dinner, watch cultural shows, light shows etc.


Dinner, Hainanese cuisine. Steamed chicken, rice ball, braised pork, stew mutton.


Thean Hou Temple


Lanterns




Yesterday picked up my new handphone, bought it all with my "hard-earn cash".



Nokia 5310 Xpress Music..... love the colour, love the functions, but hate it dont have chinese input!

Objection from parents though.... They said I'm wasteful to get a new phone since my old Nokia 1110 still working.
I think I deserves a new phone, and after all I didnt ask for money from them to buy it. I know it's a little "luxurious" to get a phone for my current expense, but I'm using it for my own good.
Still, I did not regret getting this sleek phone. :)

The climax of the entire story, is that I'll be attending a prom in college this evening. 1st time attending one, and I wanna make sure I dont wanna blow it hahah.

Updates for the prom will be followed by another post. ;)

Excitement buildin' up

Sorry for lack of updates again. This week is a test week so I've no time and no mood to write anything much here in the blog.

Tomorrow's my last paper, and then I'll be busying for more stuffs. Of course, I'll keep this blog moving along as well. There's many things changing around so I've to pick 'em up one by one, organise it only then write it in this blog.

'til then, cheers my friend. :)

Desktop 20080219

Running on dual-screen.
Akatsuki VS Strike Freedom.

My screens are placed in "top and bottom" style instead of "left and right".

Top screen running on 1280 X 1024 resolution (normal 4:3) while lower screen displaying 1280 X 800 (widescreen 16:10).

V day @ TARC

Today I learnt pink colour is actually a vibrant colour, it's no longer a girl's colour, guys like this colour too!

Today's Valentine's Day.... the day for couples to celebrate with their another "significant half", so says. Me? I'm not taken yet, nor have any intention wanna have a partner real soon, just calm and steady. 

Our GP teacher, Ms Lynn asked us to dress in pink or red to celebrate this occasion together, regardless whether we're single or doubled. LoL. Pics ahead...

Normal pose.

 Crazy pose, well not really crazy, yet.

Chemistry experiment of the day wasn't as easy as we thought. It's titration again, but a little trickier than last semester's. Have to be real careful with the colour changes, if not the experiment will be a failure and have to repeat all over again. Because of this, today is another lunch-less Thursday for me. 

FA 1, FA 2, FA 3 solutions used for the experiment.This is taken after the experiment.

In lecture hall many people don in pink as well, but I regret I did not grab this opportunity to take down a photo of the "pink sea", hahah.

Some pinkies..... and I'm the odd red.

With Ivy and Yuyan. Behind us is Prem.

Great Day with a Little Bumper

Today is a good day, finished Pure Maths exam without any much problem. Differentiation and Integration? Those calculus questions seem tame to me, heh.

Everything was good for me, really. Had a satisfying lunch, a great conversation with friends, lesson ended earlier, a typical good day for me.

Well, things turn a little bumpy when I'm going back. Noticed my front-left tyre is flatten. Crap.
I was numb, because this isn't the first time my tyre punctured.

Thankfully my friends are around there to help me fix the mess up. I noticed the spare parts in my car isn't compatible, so have to borrow Che Tang's tools to get things fixed.

Changing a tyre ain't that hard, but it's a dirty job. I've got to thank Che Tang, Martin, Hema, Mugi, and Chin Peng for helping me out hahah. Without them, I basically left stranded down there the parking lot for some time before reinforcement came.

Talk about the punctured tyre, I suspect it's someone's fault play. There's sand fragment pop out from I'm fixing the tyre cap. I sent the car to the mechanics to check the tyre, and confirmed someone did the dirty job to my tyre.

I guess I've to reconsider to park there next time. It's weird, I didn't have problems to get along with people, and why there's someone there to mess up with me?
It may be the fella who asked for parking fee last time, I know he's illegal but for the sake of my car I paid him to shut him up. He's gone for good after that. Fag' drugger.

Still, I think today is a great day for me. A little bumper is normal in life, but what I really appreciate is that there's friends around to help you out when you're in trouble.

Friends 'til the end! :D

Chinese New Year 2008

Hmm.... I guess I've nothing much to say about this year's CNY celebration. Somewhat not as excited as past years, perhaps is because some family members did not come back.

Traffic wasn't in the most ideal condition to travel up north, but it's still moving pretty smooth albeit jams at certain parts. No accident happened (thankfully), but why there's still jam?

This time our journey back to north is more relaxing that last year, we dont need to rush for places here and there, we've plenty of time to had enough rest.

The 2nd day of CNY starts with temple-visiting. Too bad we dont have much time to visit each temples, we just stop-by the temple pledge our offerings and then off to the next temple.

With relatives in one of the temple.

The route to the temple, covered by rubber trees.

On the evening of the 2nd day, head back to grandparent's home. There, met relatives and other family members again. I think we just met each others few times in a year, particularly during CNY.

As I said, some are missing this year, so my "angpow" income is not as fruitful as usual.   :S

Travel back to the south on the 3rd day. Thankfully the journey was OK, I couldnt imagine the traffic on the next day (4th day), as many people will be rushing back down to the south because the school and work restarts on Monday.... talk about serious JAM!

Anyway, here's an advertisement by Petronas, the local oil company. They're well-known to produce great festive season ads.

YouTube - PETRONAS CHINESE NEW YEAR 2008 AD, REUNION DINNER

Real Sharingan

This is a very cool vid showing the evolution of Sharingan, one of the special abilities in Naruto.
The end product is the ultimate Mangekyou Sharingan.

Awesome!!

Some pics of F50.8 TUNiT

So far I havent heard any news bout the releasing of the new 2008 Adidas F50.8 TUNiT, nor seen any players wearing it now, but Soccer.com had put up these boots on sale on their site.

Let's check it out.


White/blue



Black/white kit pack.



Red upper chassis

ClimaCool upper chassis.


I did mention that the unique style you can observe from 2008 TUNiT boots are the back-heel part are semi-transparent, which means you can look through the boots.
Pretty sleek stuff, I've seen Umbro trying to make semi-transparent style on the boots but they made it on the sole, making it least obvious than this F50.8 TUNiT.

No news when it's coming out, even top TUNiT players like Messi and Podolski still wearing the F50.7 TUNiT. I expect this boots will be launch either in March or April, pretty soon.

It looks good in terms of aesthetics, but performance-wise, will it improve the game for the footballers?

Source: Soccer.com

Going back to hometown!

Err, actually I'm going back to my parents' hometown in Kedah. Will be starting your journey tomorrow morning, and will be back on Saturday evening, hopefully.

So I'll be away for few days, I hereby wishes all of you out there
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!
新年快乐！

The Day Before CNY Holiday

One word to comment bout the upcoming CNY holiday: CRAP.
Why crap? This is because the holiday is short, just a mere 4 days for us. Back in the schooldays we used to have a week holiday for CNY, but not for college. :(

Furthermore, the lecturers had prepared us a lot of works to be done during CNY. Assignments, tutorials, past year questions... etc. Sigh.... If we really want to finish all of 'em, basically we wont have enough time to celebrate CNY alrdy.

Our lecture class still continue as usual, although there's significantly less people than usual because some coursemates had return to their hometown to celebrate this festive season. Still, at least 3/4 of the students still turn up in the class, which surprises the lecturers, as most of the time like this the students are gone for good.

Just when Mr Low is "enjoying" teaching us, the electricity suddenly went off. Of course, the whole lesson was greatly affected. No electricity for mic to amplify voice, no power to project the slides, no light source to see the crowd, Mr Low have nothing to do but to chat around with us while waiting for the electricity to resume.

I spend that moment taking photos with friends in the lecture hall. Hah, too bad cant get the photos now, so cant post it up here. I'll repost the pics once I got the pics from my friend CQ.

Mr Yap's lecture class followed after Mr Yap's lecture, but since there's no electric so he cant spend his "last" moment with us in the lecture hall. He ended up announcing his resignation in canteen. As expected, many people are shocked to hear the confirmation of his resignation because we just thought he's joking as usual, or he's just changing his position. The good news is, he'll still be teaching us lectures as a part-time lecturer instead of full-time lecturer. Why he wanna resign? He didn't say... not even in his blog! I've managed to record down a few bits of his "final speech".

Our last lesson of the day is Chemistry tutorial handled by Mr Low again. Not much stuffs to study, just finish up an A2 chapter.

Our class suppose to have 2 more lessons after that, Bio and Phyz practical. Ms Chong is absent due to personal reason, and not many willing to stay up to 2pm for Phyz practical, as the Chem tutorial ended at 11am. We officially start our CNY holiday at that moment after finishing Chem tutorial, heh.

After the class ends, I followed some classmates went to canteen to chit-chat awhile before going home. It's good to socialise with fellow friends, especially you have no time to talk so much and you all will be missing in action for a week, hah. A great day I'd say, especially the electricity part killed all the lecture class. :D

Part of SN8B classmates.

In lecture hall with coursemates around me.

Coursemates again, heh.

Some of the girls in my class.

'til then, Happy Chinese New Year for those who're celebrating it!! ;)

Writing Styles

I'm having a little conflict within myself. I'm struggling to decide what kind of writing styles should I adapt in writing essays.



I used to write essays as if I'm writing a blog, with the difference that I write with a pen on the paper instead of on the keyboard. It lifts my confidence up when I see the teacher marked the paper and return to me with a satisfying score.

This year, my GP teacher isn't that kind compare to the previous teacher. She demand more mature writing from us, and those titles she gave for essay-writing cannot stimulate my inspiration to write it like blogging. It may be the nature of the title itself doesn't suit my blogging style, also I have little knowledge bout the topic.

I suddenly turn from a guy who loves to write, becoming someone who fears to write. It's absurd. I'm not willing to put down anything because I do not want to produce a work which I personally dont think is good. But sometimes I cant help but do things against my desire because if I didnt do it, that will cost my marks. It's not a good news for me definitely.

To deal with this problem, I've been trying to adapt a more formal writing style, but I hardly see it works well. I've read lots of articles with excellent writings, but I dunno how to mimic their style to put it as my own. Eventually the work turns up to be a mixture of different styles of writings, which is bad if the examiner is a British who's more concern on the quality of writing than anything else. I think writing in formal style limits my expansion of the content, giving me a hard time to inject some blood into the article. Lifeless I'd say.

Blogging on the other hand, turns out to be more casual method of writing but packed with lively ideas, just like the way I feel right now writing this post. I've the freedom to control everything in the writing, what I want to write, how I do it, and when I finish it.

I'm currently working on another essay titled "What are the qualities of a good teacher?". This topic is something I'm more interested to write about instead of writing the effects of foreign culture invasion towards local culture and identity, that kind of stuffs which I don't really care to bother about. I'm writing this essay in a more formal manner.

So far I've completed 50% of the essay, and I'm not rushing it as the due date is next 2 weeks. When I read my own essay, I felt that it lacks of soul in it, something which is essential in writings if you want to score high marks. I was thinking, should I rewrite the whole article in a more casual blogging style?

This link will direct you to the partially done essay, perhaps you ought to have a look in order to understand what am I trying to say here. Yes you've to read many things here, but please help me with me will'ya? I really appreciate for your time you went into it and give me some useful advices.
Alas, I concede that I'm not as good as other writers out there, well at least I'm trying to improve things.

That's it for now folks, better continue to work on the essay.