Not counting the finals, I’m really coming to the start of the last week of my university life. Or on a bigger picture, the very end of 16 years of formal education, at least for the foreseeable future. 4 years of university life have been a continuum of hits and misses. For what it’s worth, I’m thankful the hits far outweigh the misses.

Looking outwards, I’m not afraid of what’s out there really. But the end of one phase and the start of another phase, it’s the same feeling as trying to snuggle out of bed in the morning – i really like the comfort of the bed even though i knew it’s necessary to get out of the bed for anything to be done. Student life, i will miss you and its concessions!

Words can’t express how inspired I am after watching this.

I’m probably one of the last ones around to watch this since I’ve heard of “The Last Lecture” more than a couple of times, but didn’t find enough time nor impetus to spend more than an hour on this. As things somehow always fall into its place, I’m supposed to watch this for e-learning.

Professor Randy Pausch is a man I haven’t heard about before this video, but he’s now a person that I really look up to. A role model. A man who had his dreams and made them. A man who epitomises the word ‘inspire’.

Something new for me today -- 1 hour 13 minutes is all it takes for a random stranger to put me on my knees and win over me completely. Two words I’ve got for this man.

Time for a breather! Handed up eff-why-pee first draft! Finally, I’m almost done with you! Those nightless nights, dayless days of struggle. Last few weeks haven’t been easy juggling so many things but I’m thankful for the good things that happened between all the mess. And it’s less than 2 month to the big adventurE :)

the campus papers, the international tribunals, CNA news, fiction books, a new interesting film, an old interesting film, that website that teaches Korean language, the newly discovered Scandinavian indie bands, the website that collects some awe-inspiring product designs, the one-day lomography shoot that i’ve always wanted to embark on…

Bookmarks one too many, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back onto them.

Oh, december it seems? When dreaded exams are done, the streets are decorative and all is rosy.

Oh, but there’s still FYP. fuck.

We should really start thinking about how life starts and how it ends, and think about how to fill the spaces in between with a multitude of emotions that is gratifying enough not to be forgottten. – November 6, 2009

From today’s lecture. Some lectures can be genuinely interesting too.

if you don’t even have faith in what you have done, who are you to convince?

if a little more sensitivity is exercised, you would have considered the amount of work the poor chap spent in getting the mechanism to make it even work and not blatantly dismiss it as being too simple

if two wheels is suffice in getting the bicycle to move, do you need six wheels just to appear more sophisticated?

oh well

Everything human do is tinged with emotions. Emotion changes the way we think and guide us to towards the good. Affect and emotions are crucial in everyday decision making according to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio who studied people with impaired emotion systems. These people are unable to function effectively in the world because they were unable to make decisions. They could describe how they should have functioned in a logical and rational way but still couldn’t determine where to live, what to eat or what products to buy. The people in Damasio’s study were often unable to choose between alternatives, especially those that appears equally valid. This is where the people with intact emotions would choose something because ‘they just feel like it’. Such feelings are expressions of emotion and are crucial to human behavioral.

While in the midst of being dragged along by a number of work-in-progresses (WIPs), I’ve come to realise a few things.

In group dynamics, especially those that involve creative inputs rather than merely fulfilling requirements, there’s a streak of obstinacy in me that refuses to be convinced till I’m convinced. This competitiveness is especially apparent in matters that are particularly significant to me. On the other hand, there is another side of me that resist being out-rightly outspoken because it’s uncharacteristic of me.

At the end of the week, the lesson to take home is – to learn to see everyone as an individual, whether if he/she is a friend, an enemy, a stranger, an academic, a student, a smartass or a dumbass, just everyone! Only when one begin to appreciate everyone’s uniqueness, can the benefits be maximised.

Time’s gone by, sometimes you look for the closest evidence that you’ve grown up indeed. Most of the time, after a couple of vindications, followed by a couple of false dawns, you wonder if those are mere illusions accidentally happening at the same time.

Chungking Express aka 重庆森林 is a 1994 film. I was 9 years old during 1994. Couldn’t have watched this movie then. I probably watched this during one of the movie’s rerun on tv somewhere between the mid to late nineties. I was very young then, and I thought this film is boring. Just a couple of whirl-ish camera angles. Besides, I never really understood what’s going on exactly. So my memory of this movie is pretty vague. Almost dreamlike – I think it really took place, but i can never be too sure.

Fast-forward 15 years on, I’m 24 years old this year, the age of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s character in the movie (with no intention to attempt to draw any possible comparison. I swear I’ll never try. Just unbeautifully imperfect coincidence that’s all.) I think I’ve probably watched parts of this movie during one of those reruns on local tv over the past 15 years, but again, I’m not too sure.

Just on this fine evening, I suddenly thought of Mijung, who had gone missing, and I decided to watch this movie properly once more in its whole entirety. 1 hour 37 minutes, I enjoyed it. Like how I enjoyed 2046 though a lot of people still hates me for dragging them to the theatre for that movie. That’s the surest sign of growing up. That the kinetic motion on your clock is no illusion. It feels like over the years, all you’re doing is accumulating experiences, your imaginations and your thoughts. When you reach a certain amount of quota, you gain access to different understandings. You began to understand things that you never used to understand.

Like the retirement speech I heard this morning, if life is divided into 3 stages, I’m probably at the brink of the 1st stage, sauntering awkwardly into the 2nd. Gaining the number of candles on my birthday cake seems exciting. Surely more heartbreaks ahead along the way, but all of these are slowly easing me into the better understanding of the next great movie.

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internship…about 30 working days left. I’m not a great fan of countdowns. I didn’t even really do it for my ORD. But this time, I truly felt that I’ve overstayed my welcome.