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.