A Month to Go

A month to go before I leave Carnegie Mellon. I realize that it is going to be damn hectic month to a level that I am worrying about it every 5 minutes. I am writing everything down here so that I myself can be reminded and clear view on the mess.

• My Linux mini is demanding an open-source contribution at the end of the semester on top of weekly homework and a software license analysis.
• The Human Computer Interaction project that I've been working on since Spring 2006 is coming to an end. I need to leave an impact on the web site and document on every little detail. In my point of view, the development have been very messy mainly because I'm using PHP which has a limit on the number of lines of code. In other words, it's not a good platform/language for a large web application project. I should have taught myself Java Servlets earlier on.
  
• Packing up. 4 years in the same room have helped accumulate a house of personal possessions most of which need to sold, discarded or be given away. For the rest, I'll throw them into boxes and figure out a way to ship them to New York.
• TWO Economics Projects. Professor have been delaying the progress of the class up to a point that we have 2 projects in a month. None of the instruction for the projects have been released yet.
  
• Finalize a place to stay for the next 1 year in New York.
• H-1B work visa blues. If I don't get it this year, there's a change I'll be spending 3 months in mid 2008 either working in an overseas office, taking an unpaid leave during that period or leave the country for good.
• Parents visit. I have not figure out a travel plan for them who have not visited this country before. Uncle Edmund and family from Houston might be coming for graduation. So is my dad's cousin from Maryland.

I must accommodate all above into my currently very dormant final-semester lifestyle of watching YouTube day and night.

Photos from Miami:
http://picasaweb.google.com/winstoncyl/2007031020070318SpringBreakMiami (most photos here)
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbasah/ (I was lazy to take photos)

I'm ending my long night with a blog entry which also welcomes the sunrise of this Friday morning. i just spent the whole night writing long responses to the world history questions.

there's a surge of newly-burned downloaded divx movies. bob brought some back from penn state so this weekend will not be that boring. in fact, i had lived boring days by watching movies. watching movies is an escape from the real world that can be uninteresting. this weekend shall be bourne supremacy's weekend. i hope it's as good if not better than it's prequel, Bourneo Identity. all these spy movies that travel to europe kick ass. maybe i should go to some less visited part of europe. Professor Kats of my World History class often told us stories of European cities. The old man had been a tour guide in Rome in his young days. He said he spends most of his earnings in travelling. I guess he has visited every country in Europe.

back to movie watching, this is one of the few things that is uncommon between my father and i. i'm a movie buff and he's not. he thinks movies are just bulllshit because they are not true. the television shows he watches are the news, documentaries and boxing matches. home is two weeks away and i think i should introduce to him reality shows. i'm sure he'll like them.

 

 

Fuiyo. I just spent the past 12 hours coding with only an hour of intermission to cook and eat dinner. This further delays my world history homework which would take around 2 or 3 days to finish.



I was Joe's navigator throughout the trip to D.C. I had thought of lazying at the back seat until Amos gave me the front passenger seat because I'm the biggest in body size among all 8 of us in the van. It was a good experience though. The trip to D.C. was smoooth and in D.C., it went well also. Streets there are manhattan like but there were confusions when going to the Union Square. Going back yesterday was different. I misread Map Quest and missed the junction to I-70/76. What should be a mile ride along US-30 ended up a 100-mile ride along the countryside of central Pennsylvania. The road was just like Sarawak's intertown roads. One lane for each direction. Vehicles were very sparse and there we passed places that we absolutely uninhabited. Spooky at times especially when we passed empty and dark mills and houses. We even went up some higlands where the road were quite winding. Very much like the road up to the Kinabalu highlands in Sabah.



Joe stopped for a visit to the washroom at one gas station. I took the chance to ask the elderly man who manned the place. Absolute good samaritan. Although I didn't spend a penny at his shop, he gave me a detailed instruction on how to get back to highway. Actually, we had thought of just following US-30 all the way to some town called Greensburg and find out way to Pittsburgh from there. The straying into US-30 cost us an hour but nevertheless, it was an experience that I brag to my parents.



The trip to D.C. was to meet the Prime Minister at the Malaysian Embassy. He was on a very very tight schedule. During the morning, he had a short meeting with Bush Jr. at the White House. He met with us for less than the time planned but he did give quite an inspiring message to work on the country's human capital. "What's the use of having first class facilities when we're third class people?" he said. I managed to shake hand with him. He shook hand with every single student actually.



One thing I noted was there presence of the U.S. Secret Service. Yeah,  they provide security services for visiting foreign leaders too. I was impressed with them because while everyone were happily talking and smiling, they kept a serious look as if somebody would come out of the crowd with a gun. They were in their world of their own. A world of constrant suspicision.



The Malaysian Embassy is fairly a huge building. Few stories high with a few halls and a main ballroom. The diplomatic mission moved in quite recently so that explained why everything looked new. Dr. Zahratul, the MSD Officer for the Eastern region, was there. So suprised to see her remembering my name. In fact, she remembered many students' names.



About Washington D.C., it's a city where buildings are not closely built. There are no high rise like in New York. To me, the city's like a park where's there's less air of business around. Smithsonian Musuems were many around and are the tourist magnets. There's a huge memorial of Abraham Lincoln. So huge that the steps to his giant statue were as many to Sibu's Sacred Heart cathedral. We visited Arlington Cemetery where the assasinated Kennedy brothers were interned together with Jacky Kennedy and JFK's babies who died during birth. We were astounded were the huge number of white tombstones of the dead soldiers there.



 

Summer Session 2 began this morning. Contrary to my initial plan of taking three subjects, I dropped differential equations with hope to enjoy the next 6 weeks with just C Programming and Intro to World History.



My friends and I went to a Hong-Kong-style restaurant called Tasty's somewhere at the more shady part of Shadyside. There was great talk about this restaurant as being the best place in Pittsburgh that offers authentic, home-cook Chinese dishes. Honestly speaking, it was not as great as what I expected. I think Oriental Kitchen is much better despite not being as cheap as Tasty's.

finally, the homework for this week is done. Yesterday was a horrible day having to spent nearly 12 hours finishing concepts and 217. i'm slow i must admit but at least i learn it the hard way.



I've not touched the piano for more than a month. Last time I played was after the calculus final exam at mudge. the piano there seems to be better than the ones for practice in the college of fine arts. mudge's close for the summer.



i remembered my mum sending me for my first piano lesson at 5. Mrs. Wong was a very gentle teacher and charges lower fees than other music teachers in town. When I first took her lessons, it was in a shophouse in town. 2 years later she moved her school to her home which is a proper semi-d house.



i'm not really sure why mum made me take piano lessons. probably because other parents were sending their kids for music lessons but i know for sure that my dad wants me to have at least some inclination towards music. my father's youth revolved around the guitar and even until now it still does. he was fresh from law school and was just starting his own firm so he couldn't afford a proper upright piano and instead got me a Roland KR-33 keyboard that had 12 different sounds and barely the touch of an acoustic piano. 5 years later, he bought us a proper upright. a reconditioned Yamaha U-1 that i think has better sound than any other uprights I've played so far. my dad bragged that he was so lucky to get that one for 7k and it still sounded superior. a brand new would cost nearly 20k.



i'm glad i had a formal and a rather classical training. as usual, we kids started off with scales. two octaves and at a moderate pace which i used to dislike at first. many would agree as well but to those who think that scales are useless, they actually miss a great training for improvisation. being proficient in the scales mean that you're proficient in pressing the right key to produce an acceptable, audible melody.



my dad has always been a big encouragement for me to take music seriously though not to level of making a living out of it. he believes that one who's trained solely on classical pieces is hardly a musician. i believe that one who plays music just by trying to playing other music exactly note by note is missing 99% of the beauty of music playing. dad told me to developed my listening skills at a very early age. he would accompany me with his guitar. on the other hand, i'm very poor in my sightreading since i quite dislike playing from music sheets. but i think they are useful to learn other players technique.



i quit taking music lessons when i was form 1 after 7 years of tutorship under Mrs. Wong. she's my longest teacher that I've ever had. most school teachers will only teach me for no more than 2 years. i left at Grade 5, a grade to me i think is the grade where most boys leave music lessons. zunliang left because his parents promised him than he can stop taking lessons after grade 5. on the ABRSM exams, i merely make the passing grade which saves my parents from another year of expensive fees. generally, girls do better than boys in the piano exams and that explains why many of them made it to the 8th grade. priscilla, tracy, florence, kerry, etc. counting the guy friends of mine: .... none.



i quit because learning 3 pieces for a year just to be tested by an Englishman for half an hour. it gets more and more tense as the exam day gets nearer. my sister, during one year, failed to show up for her exam because she having a really bad fever. she had to wait for another year to pass her current grade. in short, she took 2 years complete her third grade all because of being terribly ill during the exam day.



on the other hand, the classical music training taught me how to play properly. the scales that i learned are so useful that i still can play any of them today. from that, i learned the proper fingering. since it's my parents 21st wedding anniversary (yes, i'm the eldest) tomorrow, i'd like thank them for spending a significant portion of their monthly salary on an opportunity that not every child will have.

econs 4th test was today. hopefully my grades will be good enough so that i don't have to take the finals.



concepts and probability homework due tomorrow. yet to properly start on any of them.

I'm really disappointed with my concepts grade today. One of the lowest in the class 11 students. I really thank God for having the professor to award and extra bonus points of 20 due to some typo.



Called home today and surprise to hear from my little bro that he and my uncle were mugged on in Sarawak Plaza, Kuching. They were approached by some youths claiming that they belong to some gang and asked for money from my uncle. My brother was quite scared but he did a very wise thing. He stood up and walked away. The leader of the gang asked where my brother is going. He boldly said that he's gonna call the police. "You telephone la kalau you berani". My uncle was not really afraid but found it amusing to be in that kind of situation.



My bro placed a call to dad who was back home. He called a friend of his who's one of the assistants supritendants in the Kuching. My bro called my elder uncle who called a cousin who's some quite important person in the state government. In 10 mins, my bro said, 2 police cars arrived but the gang had left already. The only thing that they took was my uncle's cellphone.

Nice. I spent the weekend working my ass on stuffing theorems and proofs into my head. It's very hard to concentrate at times. There's so much things going around that need attention. Anyway, the Concepts exam this afternoon was quite tough. Fortunately, the professor let us answer only 5 out of the 10 questiosns.



Went to Hunt library to borrow Ronald Reagan's A Life of Letters. The library search engine, Cameo, lists in in the "gifts" section. When I asked the librarian on the whereabout of the section, she said books listed under "GIFTS" are still being processed and yet to be placed in their sections. I read some of the letters in the bok before and they were quite interesting especially one when Reagan wrote to his son Michael who was having problems with his grades in school.



I used to write to X before. Even when she's around. It was funny how we used to exchange letters 5 to 6 pages long, mine having the worse handwriting. In fact, much worse because I felt somehow threaten by the amount that she could write.



Another exam tomorrow. Econs. Econs will over by this week. I hope I won't have to take the final.

The exam review during Concepts was intmidating with the expecation to know how to prove every single theorem and lemma the lecturer presented for the past 3 weeks. So, we headed out to GE to buy some supplies for the upcoming week.



Bob was reluctant to cook so I took up the duty and made nasi lemak. I'm probably biased but I think my mum's nasi lemak sambal is the best in the world. No kidding. So, I cooked the sambil based on her recipe. Then, I saw a bag of uneaten Pretzels belonging to Kenneth. It was there since Winter so I think it's time we make use of it. None of us really like to eat Pretzels anyway. Since chicken is part of nasi lemak, so I decided to use the pretzel crumbs as a coating for the fried chicken. Grounding the pretzel was a problem. Having the pretzels packed in a ziplock bag, I took a soda bottle full of water and start crusing them. It didn't really ground much and the ziplock bag started to tear. So, I used the blender instead.



Saw yummy brownies sold at Giant Eagle but what a price for just half-a-cake. So, I baked one last night. First time baking a cake. I didn't really work that well. Too moist.

Another 5 a.m. bed time. Surprisingly, these days I sleep early on weekends. Summer classes can be taxing when the questions are hard and even discussion is not allowed. I have a probability exam tomorrow and a concepts exam monday as well as a econs exam on Wednesday. Good thing that econs will be end by next week so I don't have to take up at 8 for the rest of Summer 1.



So far, today's weather has been good. Not very hot. Around 20 C. No sweat but still can wear shorts and t shirt around. That's the ideal weather.



I'm thinking of working as a lab assistant for 15-100 in the coming fall. Applied for it but need to attend some recruitment meeting. If I get the job, I'll be spending some weekday nights in the programming clusters helping freshmen out with their programming assignments. I need to start working on some job if I am to apply for internship in the future. Right now, I have no working experience.

Fuiyo.. Concepts (as in Concepts of Maths) was very not intuitive today. I feel so dumb compared to that math major girl who's taking the course with us. Prof. Grossberg introduced to us Well Ordering Principle (W.O.P.) to us. The definition seems infinitive and to the dumb like, it seems trivial. It states the existence of a minimum value in a non-empty set of numbers. Am I right? Correct me if I'm wrong. When he delved into proving the theorem that the Induction Principle = W.O.P, that's when I started to get dizzy. Suppose this.. suppose that...



I finally got the Indy machine running. Last Monday, Bo and I carted a free 19" SGI Monitor from the kind and helpful SCS Help Desk. This afternoon, the guy who donated the Indy to me came and resetted the root password and he taught a few basic stuff about Irix and Unix in generally. It's just a 166 Mhz machine built around 10 years ago but it is so well built that I can call it a product that has been over-engineered. The light blue casing is very solid. In fact, more solid than any PC casing I've seen. The CPU thin is thin too. The interesting part about this machine is its boot tune. When you turn on this Indy, you can here this tada sound.... I still have a lot to read about this IRIX. Apprarently, there are still user groups on IRIX 6.2 which might be helpful. Yet to set up the network as well. I intend to run this as a simple web server. Most probably this site will be hosted on that machine instead on my CMU Andrew web space.



After Arun left, I dashed to Hammershlag to help Seng Keat and friends move his things to his new dorm room at Morewood. Then I got a call from someone whom I'm borrowing a piece of software from so I had to leave Seng Keat before even meeting him (emm.. weird statement).



Then it started to rain heavily with the thunders and lightning.



This sucks. I'm stuck in Cyert waiting for the thunderstorm to go away. Killing time by writing a blog. Huh...

I was thinking about the war in Iraq and the involvement of other countries in sending military forces there. Looking at terrorist threats that the involved countries are facing, especially peaceful Japan, I understand why Malaysia refused to support the war. Although Malaysia can be said to a moderate Islamic country, there are some people who vehemently oppose the war and are willing to use terrorism. I'm glad that there are hardly any terrorist threats back home despite easy going immigration on foreigners coming in and out. In short, I think the government is doing the right job to avoid possible terrorist threats.



God bless Malaysia.

Decided not to drop the 217 stats class. back to original summer plan.

Switching from the 217 stats class to diff eq. Hope it works.

I'm done with my finals! and I'm done with my freshman year in college. Never felt so free.

Carnegie Mellon freshman Physics courses are tough. Yesterday's Physics II for Engineers final was tough. Hmm.. maybe it was not tough. Maybe I was careless. I overlooked a lot of things. I carelessly measured the changing area of a triangle as the changing area of a rectangle. I wrote a travelling wave equation for a standing wave in its harmonic frequency. I don't know what other careless mistake I did. I think I'm getting a B for this course. Again, not after a B for Physics I. Hard to believe that I feel tihs way after mad studying for it for the past 1 week.

My mouse went dead last night. I always eat as I use the computer so that mouse that had served me since I got my old laptop in 2002 turned oily. I brought it to the bathroom, rubbed some liquid soap on it, rinse it with damped toilet paper, dried it with towel, plugged it back it and there was no red LED light at the base. The mouse has served me well. I would still use it if it didn't get electrocuted last night. A generic, two-button Logitech, it's an example of fine Swiss engineering although its made in China. With no mouse, I had to spent Friday night at the cluster but thanks to Ding, I got to borrow his extra Microsoft Mouse, an optical one.

On the way back from campus last night at 1 am, a white dude talking on his cellphone came up to me and asked my name.

"Hey buy, what's your name?" he asked.

"Why do you need it for?" I stammered.

"Anthony? NIce to meet you Anthony. Do you live around here?" "

Hesistantly I said yes. The next thing he did was running across the red traffic light at the PNC Bank junction. I realized he was drunk from the way he ran. He hailed a taxi but couldn't get one.

I have programming today. I just hope everything will go fine. No mental blocks. No hard methods. No null exceptions. I HATE NULL EXCEPTIONS.

The Chem E final I just had was so freaking tough. I guess all 12-unit finals are tough. This evening's one had me leave out quite a number of stuff. I'm unsure on some questions that I did. Mole balance, mass balance, etc. Even the first question took me a while to tackle. The good thing was Prof. Powers was very nice to us. Since yesterday or the day before was Cinco De Mayo, the Mexican celebration of its Mexico's independence during the batlle of Puebla, he told us that this time's 10% extra points will be on that holiday as a theme. I printed out a Mexican flag and glued it on my shirt. It was okay but the cracking sound made by the paper is slightly annoying. Prof. Powers brought in Mexican food and drinks for our exam "half-time". A coursemate brought in an array of homemade Tortilla dips. But sorry to say that the food didn't ease the trouble that we went through, or at least what I went through. I nearly panicked at one moment. I did thought of hanging myself if I do badly in this exam. Yeah, I actually did.

Anyway, with my performance in the first two hour-exams, all I hope I'll get an A for this course. God bless, Professor Powers for his kindness and generosity to us, his students, throughout the entire duration of this intro course. Thanks Professor!

The classes for my first year in Carnegie Mellon are done. All left are the finals which leave many of us unsettled, restless, panicking, worrying, etc. Yet there is this dance performance night thing called Dancers Symposium tonight. I almost bought the tickets to go with James and friends but I decided that with 4 finals ahead, this shouldn't be the time to admire the physical feats of the dancers showing off their finely toned bodies. This is the time for a struggle - a capstone struggle after all that was done for the past 16 weeks. For some, the good grades of their midterm exams awardedto them with the exemption of the finals. Yes, congrats to my friends taking Principles of Econs for their late night attendance of past review sessions have granted them the very prize of academic excellence - an A for the course.

Yes, I will be enrolling in summer school.
Yes, it will be for both summer.
And yes, it will be in Carnegie Mellon.

[ Click here ] to read my roommate, Kenneth K. Eng's speech marking the last few days of our Freshman year.

I was so tense before the 3rd 15-111 Exam today that I practically couldn't smile or be cheerful anytime before 11.30am. It went okay I guess. I just hope my code doesn't fail me.


The main event of the day for me was the Chemical Boat race held at the Fence. Sunny day today and the weather was cool. I like it. There was quite a crowd of Chemical Engineering undergraduates witnessing us freshmen racing our Styrofoam boats.

The length was 45 ft. 0 load.

Ours went like this: our first try was only 33 ft and we believe that the bottle was not shaken very well. The jet went slow. I panicked of course. So, on our second try, we made sure the bottle was shaken really well till white foam was seen inside the tube. It really went faster than any other competing boats but we lacked the amount of liquid so it stoped at 40 ft. It was really a boost of confidence and on our third try, we added an 50 mL of acid. It didn't went further. 39.8 ft I think.

Anyway, we were glad that it went striaght. To tell the truth, we were more worried on it not going straight than the amount of chemicals needed. Calvin's group was the winner and they deserve it after all their effort. We worked hard too but not as hard Calvin's. Anyway, glad that it was over. The race was more memorable than my Mech E race last year. Designing a boat is much easier than a car definitely.

Lucky for me to have to go out and send the F.C.E. for Prof. McElfresh. I realized that it's chilly outside and I need get a jacket for the outdoor testing of chem boat.



Went to mIRC for the first time in like...a year? Met my second cousin Fabian @ #iban. We've not met for around 5 years I think. Maybe more. I updated me with his current life in UPM Bintulu and on his cousin Freddy. Told me he has a gf so chun that he's jealous. Haha. We spoke Iban on text which is kinda awkward at first. My spoken Iban sucks coz I tend to stammer in that language. I think my brother's and sister's mastery of the language is better than mine. Partly because they have more Iban friends in school and they speak Iban with them. For me, I spoke Malay with my Iban friend. What a shame.



In Iban, the word for "Malay" is "Laut". I was thinking on the origin of the term. I don't think it sounds any near to the Malay word for "sea". Also, I don't think Malays live near the sea. One possiblity is that the Ibans brought along the term from the origin in Sumatera a couple hundred years ago. Maybe they interacted with the Malays in Sumatera. Another possiblity that the Ibans must have referred them to the people who lives near the sea. The Malays and Melanaus in Sarawak generally live by the sea especially along the Kuching and Sibu division. So, I guess when the Malays first meet the Iban, they were introduced as people who lives near the sea. "Kami orang tinggal dekat laut sana." The Ibans might have nodded with partial confusion so they referred them as "laut" since the Malays said they live near the sea.