Frank's woodwork gift for us in Dusseldorf 

snow man. first major snowstorm of winter 2005/2006 

snow man. first major snowstorm of winter 2005/2006 

Operating Systems

In a dilemma now. Should I pursue my interest in taking operating systems next Spring? I know it will my time away from all my other courses. For sure. However, with it, you're on a class on your own. It's like going through a commando training for a green baret or navy seal.

This Futures in Finance resume book is doing some good. Just got another e-mail saying that I've been selected for a first round interview for Summer Fixed Income Analytics with Lehman Brothers. According to the job posting, the position deals will programming, something I am quite comfortable with/love to do.

Met Han Chun at Eujern's (my networks partner) birthday last night and he said he is also selected of Bank of America first round but for a full time. Definitely he'll get something considering his awesome GPA and hard core courses he's taken in both ECE and finance. But one thing that I really need to improve is my interview skills. I think I have to meet with my career counselor next week to polish things up.

The thing is that this interview thing is organized by CMU's career center and according to Han Chun, these investment banks will not cover our travel expenses. There'll be a pool of companies that day interviewing in CMU's Wall St. campus. Going to be a busy day for me then.

Still waiting for more such e-mails.

I want to change my star.

Insane Week

After a very much easy past 2 weeks, this week is a storm. Here's how:

Monday (today): Optimization Homework
Tuesday: Nothing due
Wednesday: Optimization exam, 2 Matlab homework due
Thursday: Networks Project 2 due at midnight for early bird extra credits
Friday: Embedded Systems quiz #3, Macroeconomics homework #4 due (Trying to ask for an extension considering how busy this week will be)

Procastination leads to depression.

Thanksgiving break was awesome. I barely touched school work with all the cooking and poker that went on. Played with Hassan, Dilo and King almost every night. Won an awesome 9-hour game on Tuesday. I lasted till 7 a.m. to become the winner. On Thanksgiving, I won the game against the usual gang + A and Eric. Also, I made the best dish for the Thankgiving pot luck. It was more popular that the two turkeys. I bought a leg of lamb from an middle-eastern butcher, marinated it over night lots of garlic, tomato paste and olive oil and slow-roasted the whole day on Thanksgiving.

Will be in NYC on Dec 21/22 for an interview with Bank of America for its Summer Techonology Analyst position. I must prepare very hard for this one. Cheng Hau, if you're free do come down from Boston and lets meet up with Max and I in Manhattan.

On another note, I am slowly letting go a few weeks of emotional ups and down. Sigh. Thought would never got into this state again but who knows, A's the one who really got me after Daphne. Probably I was over sensitive on what went on and entertained a naive inner self.

Anyway, girls come and go. My mum told me this. Fact of life, isn't it?

I was with King and Roxanne (both graduate students) at Hemingway's sipping the establishments special mixes such as Sex on the Beach and Long Island Ice Tea. Roxanne was not much of a drinker. After drinking a quarter of her "Koolaide", she got dizzy and said she needs something to eat. She dug into her hangbag and took out...a Mandarin orange. Freaking hilarious.

Roxanne was telling us about one of her classmates who just got pregnant. The thing is she has been sleeping with her boss for a month. She too has a boyfriend of seven years. Who's the daddy? The boyfriend offered to raise her unborn baby. He is such a saint.

Orgasmic. Checkpoint 2 for Networks passed. Average 6 hours every evening with Eujern for the past week seems to start bearing fruit. We're now aiming for the competition stage.

I met my advisor this afternoon who happens to be my embedded systems professor as well. Was a motivating 20 mins meeting. She said if I am interested in distributed systems or computer systems in general, I should not leave CMU without taking the hard core Operating Systems design class. She praised me for taking Networks which helps to build a background in distributed systems. Registered for courses today but unfortunately on waiting lists for the graduate courses that I intend to take.

Plan for the incoming Spring semester:
ECE courses:

• 18-549 Distributed Embedded Systems (my capstone design for my ECE degree)
• 18-396 Signals and Systems (need to know some signal stuff)
• 15-498 Special Topics: Distributed System (not the real hard core D.S. class but at least it should be a good intro for me)

Non-ece:

• 21-270 Intro to Math Finance (I kinda like taking math courses. so one per sem suffices)
• Theories on Foreign Policy (on waitlist but high chances in getting in. Ms. Skinner is one of nation's top foreign policy expert who has been appointed by President Bush to the National Security Education Board)

Another hectic week. I had foreseen this week coming from my planner. Two all nighters. One for my networks bittorent project 1st checkpoint. I stayed in the clusters till 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Even Starbucks was already opened. Last night stayed up till 5 to study for embedded system's quiz that I screwed up eventually.

It's the weekend so I had to celebrate. On the way back home, I saw Brian walking slowly across. Not his usual self. He said he doesn't want to waste the free time. My impulsive decision brought us to Phi Bar (CMU's unofficial college bar) with Zane and Alex. Beer was cheap. $4/pitcher from 4-6 p.m. but it was not so fresh especially the Guiness. Old keg. Miss the fresh and crisp German beer.

It will never work

At this level of interaction, nothing will ever happen.

A truly awesome weekend of partying, drinking and poker. It's mid-sem break. CMU only granted a Friday but it was all worth it. At least for me, I utilized every second of it.

Thursday night, poker with James, A, sophomores, king and my roommates.

Friday night, went clubbing in Station Square (where I brought Max and Seng Seng for dinner at Hard Rock Cafe Pittsburgh). A club called Matrix. Met A there and something crazy happened. Absolutely crazy. =) Lots of drinking..and dancing.

Saturday night, an ad hoc poker game christening my new poker chips. 11.5 g composite clay. 400 pieces. Worth every penny I got it for. A larger crowd with real serious players gathering at my place. King sponsored the liquor and bartended for the night.

Poker Set - 400 pc. 11.5 gram composite clay

Pretty eventful week.

It's midterms week and tomorrow's midterm break for 1 day. Thus, a long weekend for that rare hedonism/relaxing.

Night was great. Had dinner with James and A, the Thai girl after the phone interview for NVIDIA. Then poker + beer + wine at my place. Great fun after study stress for the past week. Love to have this girl around. She's fun to be with. No wonder she has so many guy friends.

Am I an electrical engineer?

When I go home and people ask me what's my major, I say I study Electrical Engineering. The fact is my major is called Electrical and Computer Engineering as most U.S. universities call it.

Pretty ashamed to have that Electrical Engineering labelled on my degree. I know nuts on circuits. Actually, I do much more programming that circuit or signals work. But I think I need to leave this uni with at least a course each in Signals and Digital Circuits.

Planning to do a semester in University College London or Melbourne Uni. MARA told us they'll support studying abroad as long as the fee is paid through CMU.

Lizz Wright

I got an awesome album by Lizz Wright. It's her sophomore album, Dreaming Wide Awake. She's not really famous but right now touring major European cities. Has a deep voice and sing songs to the style of Norah Jones. Recommended tracks: I'm Confessing, Deep Wide Awake and Without You.

Very tired but I had a productive day today. Cook char kuey teow 'live' for around 3 hours non-stop during the Malaysian Food Fest. This is its 5th year in CMU and the event has become a brand name on campus. Spent the entire night last night preparing satay. I told my parents and friends that we sell satay and they thought the CMU Malaysians buy them from some Chinatown shop. No, we really make our own satay as good as the satay back at home. Thanks to the abundance of herbs and spices in the Indian grocery stores. My char keuy teow was way behind the standard of the uncles at the hawker stalls though people queued for 20 mins on average for a $3 plate.

After MFF, I went over to a HK's fren's house for a game poker. James and A was there. A is this Thai girl whom I think is comparable with Eing. She makes a good friend for a guy but you won't get emotionally attached to her. She's pretty. Very pretty. Have to admit that I used to 'like' this chick in freshman year and my friends kept making fun of me bla bla bla.. as a result, i refrained myself from knowing her better coz everyone kept making fun of me.

The good thing is poker brings people together. We played poker twice already and with poker, its easy to talk to people. Also, with poker, there's an excuse to stare at a girl's eyes. Anyway, tonight I won the second game and felt good about it.

currently lazying outside in the cool evening breeze. what a week. more to come.

3 a.m.

Friday night. 3 a.m. in the computer clusters. Been spending on average 4-5 hours a day on the networks project. This first project is due this coming Tuesday.

Wish us luck. We wrote everything but will test them tomorrow. Hopefully, 2 days is enough for debugging.

In a few hours, Carnegie Mellon's RedTeam will compete in the DARPA Grand Challenge in the Mojave desert. It's a competition on who could finish the autonomous race over 170 miles. Last year Red Team went the further at 7 miles. Most teams didn't make in a few hundred yards. This year's prize money has been doubled to $2 million but Red Team has spent over $4 million. It's crazy how much technology they put here. Drive-by-wire (just like modern aircrafts) is one cool feature. Boeing even sent an engineer to work on this project.

Hope that these two hummers won't bring embarassment to the Robotics Institute.

Dressed up and took the trouble to attend Microsoft party this evening at Pittsburgh Deli Co. in Shadyside. I was quite nervous because I don't really attend parties and feared I would stand alone at the corner. Came in, saw no one I knew and mostly CS people from my batch. Luckily there was Amit, the CS senior, whom I befriended in networks and we talked all evening about comp and his internship with bloomberg. There was free food and beer. =) Booze in midweek.

Everyone's asking me on when would there be a poker game especially James and he's bringing the gorgeous Thai, A, to play who also happens to be good in the stock market. Hassan and Dilo (Irwan) are asking as well. Ken Yu too. The poker set might not be able to cater for us all and I think I might need to get one for myself. Probably I should start a gambling house soon. Practice my skills in organizing events. This would do for a start, right? Maybe one day I can become like Donald Trump or maybe I can open a casino on the Strip in Vegas as well as in Monte Carlo.

There are two books that I want to get now:
a) Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
b) Super System by Doyle Brunson. It's the famed book for poker strategy.

Time for a little bit of jazz and gnite.

West Wing

Struggling with time management especially in trying to get a balance between networks and the rest of the classes I am taking. Technical Opportunities Conference is this Thursday and will be looking forward for some, if lucky, interviews.

West Wing is the best ever TV show ever made. In my opinion, the actors and actresses in that show are all top notched. Past Emmy's have been grabbed by each of the main characters except for Martin Sheen, the President. Season 7 premiered Sunday evening but I only managed to watch it after downloading a copy. Season 6 left us at the Democratic National Convention when Congressman Matt Santos was nominated as the Democratic Presidentatial candidate. Running mate is good old Leo McGarry whom I think is the most respected among all the superb characters.

Throughout that episode, it seems McGarry was not in good terms with Santos. Then, Josh Lyman, who now heads Santos' campaign decided not to hire Donna Moss because of she did when she was on the other camp in the Democratic presidential race. However, the ending was quite touching when McGarry sat down with Santos and they reconciled and began coming up with strategies. It was a sight to be seen.

I think West Wing is a pro Democrat television series. FYI, the producer John Wells is a CMU alumna. Huhu..

Hellish Week

It was the fourth week and it was the buziest so far. I had a checkpoint for my IRC server and the embedded lab due on Saturday night. Unfortunately, after working for 2 straight days, we didn't make the networks checkpoint. Learnt our lesson. We procastinated too much even after being warned by the TAs since the day the project writeup went out on the web site. Iwas very much involved in the project so I didn't feel that bad. I guess I have to struggle for the extra credits.

Felt so free now. Felt like after finals just ended but we have a routing daemon due to 3 weeks.

Blew Embedded & Hurricane Rita

Damn. Screwed up my embedded systems quiz this morning. If there's no partial credits for the last question, I'll get 40% off. Fortunately, the quiz's only 5% of the overall grade. But I really felt pissed off at myself for doing such mistake. I jumped into the wrong line of code and the rest of the question went down like dominoes.

I find myself doing better in signals part of electrical engineering. Maybe its because I am more experienced with stuff based on calculus. Most Asians are good in signals instead in digital stuff. Yet, I still take the computer track where the math is more discrete and require a little bit of more IQ. I find the Americans are better at this but they don't as well asians in Calculus.

Hurricane Rita is another monster storm . Now, its heading towards Texas where my uncle Edmund and his family are staying. He e-mailed us this morning and said he'll be evacuating tomorrow. Going west to either Dallas or San Antonio. In my opinion, they should evacuate further west like to Arizona or even Las Vegas.

Both Katrina and Rita are names of people I know. One is Uncle Edmund's daughter and another is someone's mum.

Microsoft Info Session

First of all, to the kiasu Indian CS student who stepped on my specs while trying to get a SECOND pair of free shirt: FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOU

Anyway, during the info session (an info session is a recruiting event) they gave us a sneak peak of the upcoming XBOX 360. The machine is white in color as most new consoles are going to be. It can also display powerpoint slides, play music from ipod, read pictures from a digicam and display it with that nice Apple screensaver effect etc.

with Stella when we just arrived in Cologe Messe 

sexy
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the ceiling of a corridor in the vatican museum
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Back row L-R: Camillus, Felicia, Benjamin
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Jalur Gemilang flying in front of Cologne's Dom
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German newswoman and JP2's mosaic
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The South Koreans teaching us some chicken-like dance during the Asian Youth Gathering
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Germans and Italians
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The famous Florentine steak. 750 g. nearly 2 lb. I couldn't finish mine.
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Rape of the Sabine Women
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The food caterers for WYD.
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The Australians are going to host the next WYD in 2008 in Sydney
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With some cool Hispanics from California
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One of the many photos we took with Italians who are very enthusiastic about the flags of other nations especially Malaysia's.
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With the popular bishop of Limburg, Frankz Kamphaus
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Syrian girls
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a couple from the Czech Republic (I think)
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The dinner we had in the castle in Nassau
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A street in the university town of Hiedelberg
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Mmm... cold German draft beer.
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One lunch I had in Frankfurt
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The streets in Florence
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My host in Nassau, Jutta Treiss, who drove all the way to Marienfield to meet us for one last time.
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The DHL blimp that took aeriel photos and videos during the WYD
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Like these words
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Cologne's cathedral really dominates the skyline.
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Cobblestone street.
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Cologne
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Strangers of the same faith.
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Drinking water dispensers like this one are installed all over Cologne, Dusseldorf and Bonn. The water comes from fire hydrant which the Germans guarantee is drinkable. The left most tap gives you beer! jk.
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Somewhere in Dusseldorf after days under a coconut shell
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Benedetto!
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Cool T-Shirt
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the place I stayed in Dusseldorf. Frank kindly lend us his hobby apartment.
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a very neat german football field
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cute japanese pilgrims in kimonos.
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crowed train
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crowed metro station
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some polynesians singing
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