A Link.

edit:
So I watched it. An hour+ long lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch. It was a very powerful talk, and I recommend you all to watch it at least once. You might learn something invaluable. I can't say I've learnt everything said in the lecture. But it sure has taught me to keep working at something if I really want to get it. I have been procrastinating my interview prep for the whole weekend. But that just shows that I don't desire it enough to make myself work hard for it.

..the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Just simply freaking awesome. Go watch it.
* * *

update:
This post is about Randy Pausch's (CMU Prof) "Last Lecture" if you still haven't figure it out. There is a link to the full lecture on his website.
* * *

I received a msg from zheng this evening at 7:06pm.
His first words, after >5 months of no-talking-on-AIM, were "oh shit". Followed by a link.
I thought he msged me by mistake. (I was away, editing my sister's cover letter.)
But as a good friend, I went to click on the link.
Tears filled my eyes.

You may not be a good friend of mine. This prolly doesn't concern you anyway.
But given that this is the n-th time you're seeing this link link link, and the fact that you are reading my bs..

..are you going to click on me?

my good-bye trip: Phipps & Schenley

Friday, June 22
Phew. I woke up late today and barely made it for a 1-hour tour at Phipps Conservatory. The last time I visited was couple years back. At that time parts of the Conservatory were still under renovation. Now they're all done and I even found some very interesting additions to the flowers and trees. Some examples are:


It's the "Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass! 2007" series of events and exhibitions! Pretty? Many of these actually reminded me of some stuff in WoW. :) The Thailand tropical forest setting in Phipps was new too. Unfortunately, time was running out so I didn't get a chance to see the rejuvenated Japanese Garden.

The gnome-like me:


You can laugh all you want...but that is NOT my real height!!


The Phipps Conservatory tour ended in a rush. Took a break and decided to go to the lake in Schenley Park for pictures.

The lake is still as dirty as ever. There were junk including tires, in the lake. And I felt sad when I saw the little duckies preying on *stuff* in the mud. :'( They should really try to conserve this area if they want to put duckies here. How can they survive on dirt!?


But seeing this family of duckies, something else came to our minds:

嘎嘎~ 嘎嘎~ 嘎-嘎-嘎
嘎嘎~ 嘎嘎~ 嘎-嘎-嘎
游來游去真快樂
就是母鴨帶小鴨~~

Heh the 母鴨帶小鴨 song that QiQi listens to.

Lastly, here's me saying goodbye to y'all from "my good-bye trip: Phipps & Schenley".

Bye bye Pittsburgh.

I have officially moved into my sister's place in Atlanta, my new home!!

sigh...the last 1 day and 2 nights in Pittsburgh was actually quite unbearable. Esp when mr. goh just left and I have nothing left to kill time with...except for a book that mr. goh has been pestering me to read, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

mr. goh bought me the book *i dunno when* but of coz the lazy me never got to read even a tenth of the book. I think I stopped at...chapter 2. Haha that was 11 pages. I actually knew the story already when my eldest sister came to visit last Halloween, she read it and told me and my second sister the story. She was very frustrated with the narrator...etc. Now 8 months later, mr. goh came and made me read it. Since I expected mr. goh to pack my desktop into my luggage before he leaves (that's 1 day and 2 nights before me), I saved this book to keep me occupied while waiting for my flight early Sunday morning. Not surprisingly, I fell asleep after the first 2 pages on Friday night.

The next morning, dreaded by the fact that I have nothing fun to do, I started reading. Then I read and read and read. And I finished!! Yay! This was the second time in my life that I tried reading nonstop. My first was Harry Potter. See all the concentration I had? That was supposed to be impressive, you know. I have many books. I shipped 6 boxes of books on media mail to Atlanta (includes textbooks and books I brought over from Singapore 4 years ago), none of them were read completely. mr. goh called from *somewhere think Tokyo* and was impressed, at the same time delighted that I finally read one of the books he bought me. Hurray again!

Btw, The Kite Runner tells a great story. Now I want to recommend to everyone because it's so moving. I was so touched by the ending I almost shed a tear. Go read!

sigh 無謂的掙扎。

Edit: mr. goh is a big loser in scissors-paper-stone and monopoly. Hmm I shall not talk about others. :p

Today, mr. goh finally got to challenge me at table tennis. He has been bragging how good he has become (while playing at work). Ya-ya blah-blah-blah... Unfortunately for him, his months of secret training brought him nowhere, I repeat, NOwhere close to drawing with me. 1 vs. 9. But I must commend him for his courage and sheer confidence that makes him think he can win me. Tsk tsk tsk. Heh he is much better a player already la. At least he made me start to play seriously. Muahahaha

So here's the final scoreboard today:
=======================
GAME GOH vs. ME
---------------------------------
Table Tennis 1 vs. 9 I WIN! :)
Pool 3 vs. 4 I WIN! :)
Monopoly (cash) -$284 vs. $2,267 I WIN! :)
Reversi 44 vs. 20 goh wins.
Foosball 3 vs. 1 goh wins.
"Sandy Table" 2 vs. 1 goh wins.
=======================

sigh....overall still a draw.

SUMMER MOVING SALE

Items for sale includes:

- Furniture & appliances
- Kitchen ware & appliances
- Textbooks
- Storage systems
- Computer accessories

EVERYTHING HAS TO GO!
View price listing at: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/xwt/sales2/

I am pwned.

It's the last week of school and I'm really very extremely absolutely stressed. This is probably the most stressful week in my entire college life! I never thought graduation would be so stressful...I thought it would be more like a relaxing last semester in school. Sigh~

On the bright side, once I get everything done and over with, I can plunge once more into the World of Warcraft! Hopefully early next week. ^_^ Planned out my class, talents, and professions: bloodelf priest, shadow specced, jewelcrafting and mining. mr. goh will be a bloodelf hunter, noob specced, alchemy and herbalism. Will be fun! This is the only thing I can look forward to give me the energy to survive through this damn week.

P.S: Had the last Management Game class today. Saddens me. T_T

Last Spring Carnival. Enjoy.

*chian-chian*
It's Spring Carnival again! I'm always looking forward to the Spring Carnival weekend. Why? Because it's an official excuse for playing, lazing, and celebrating. ^^)v
I love visiting all the booths, especially those that give freebies if you play their games. Spring Carnival without mr. goh around is definitely considered as boring and lonely. Well, no one to act childish with me and no one to pay for rides. T_T) At least this year I got Akiko to go with me, so I didn't appear too stupid to be playing by myself. So here we are at our first stop:

Looks cute eh? The trees and stuff are REALLY pixelated. But there wasn't any games set up and ready to play, so ppl just walk in this end and out from the other. And obviously, no freebies lah. Oh btw, the theme this year is SMALL THINGS MADE LARGE. As you can see, this one features the "inside" of a gameboy, hence "pixelated".

Please do NOT be mistaken. This does not belong to the gameboy booth, but the one right opposite. Conclusion #1: booth ideas this year are quite limited. But this is really cool because you can actually press the A B buttons and it makes a nice ding sound just like a really controller! The actual booth front itself is just *urgh*. I can't figure out what the hell it means so there's no photo to mark its existence. This is also one of the ??? ones that we just....skip lah.

SSA!! I had a hard time finding the SSA booth. It's so inconspicuous, don't you think? It also took me at least 2 minutes to understand what it is about. Conclusion #2: SSA booth fanciness diminishes yearly. A mouse hole. Lots of junk in a mouse hole, including a used packet of Kleenex tissue paper. This Sunkist soda can is my favorite. Here's the game.

A maze! The objective of the game is to lead the mouse through the maze to the goal = kitchen (center) without setting off the mouse trap. How, you might ask. The answer is magnets. Using a long stick with a magnet attached to one end, control the mouse (another big magnet) from underneath the wooden table. Interesting arh? Conclusion #3: SSA is better at designing games.
I was a little disappointed at the engineering of this mechanism though. The underside of the table was not designed properly. There is a half-inch wide border around the edges that makes your magnet impossible to reach the mouse above. ^^||) Just a little imperfection lah. Heh, as long as they gimme my prize. A DIY mouse-pen!

"MONOPOLY!! :D" is my first reaction. Really felt like a kid when I was browsing through this booth...like I'm living in all these board games. Monopoly, The Game of Life, Risk, Chinese Chess, and the fishing game (below) that you can actually fish with. No freebies here, but I enjoyed the tour very much. ^.^)

I don't remember walking into this booth, it prolly doesn't have much in there but has a cute booth front. The bugs on the exterior wall are made "spin-able" but experience tells me that it is VERY FRAGILE. So spin it at your own risk!

...no comment as to what's inside. Heh. The Fringe Trap! Actually looks quite fun, has a couple of games to play, including shooting and mini golf! But we didn't go in.

Battleship looks cool, but not too fun. Originally, it's a hoops game. But they didn't have a hoops, so make-do with a ball. The objective is to hit the red pins i think at least 3 times in 5 throws. Easy as it may seem...I missed it 3 times.

The following two has no relations to one another.

Just to show you the kinds of eye-deers about small things that are made large.

This is actually quite cool. The ugly CMU ID!

And here's my favorite. ^_^)

Looks really pretty inside! You can make your own bee and stick it in the honeycombs...so interactive eh? And there's a picture of Akiko's bee. Mine was just falling apart. T_T) That's not the best part yet.

Our motivation for going into this booth...

Do I look like a bee? ^^)

Last stop of the day...the rainforest thingie. Very very pretty...there's even a waterfall like thingy! (top right) No games, but we get to plant some flower seeds into a small cup and bring home with us. Akiko just dumped hers by a nearby tree. There's mine! Chibi keeps toppling it over. Lost a lot of dirt leh. I have to lock it in the bathroom.

And a random picture. Went back today just to take a photo of it. But disappointingly, there's nothing much inside.

The End. :D

3 months old chicken breast...

...can be turned into CURRY CHICKEN!! Meal of the day: Curry chicken rice with potatoes. Does it look oishi to you? :P

Korean Drama FRENZY!

From Autumn Tale to Goodbye My Love...Winter Sonata to Full House, I have already watched 4 korean dramas. And I can't stop!! Only Goong left. Summer Scent is not downloading...and Spring Waltz has no subtitles (only realized after I finished dled the entire series. doesn't appear to be good either.)

View [My Sadness Ratings], click more.
Autumn Tale - SWOLLEN EYES
Goodbye My Love - SAD
Winter Sonata - WET FACE
Full House - WET EYES (quite funny too :])

Leaving for Atlanta next Wed, will have lots of things to do/take care of. For instance, I need to study for GMAT, prepare grad school applications (essayss argh), work on 70-201 service project essay..................make time to sing karaoke, play tennis/table tennis/basketball..................this korean drama frenzy will have to stop. I don't even think I would have time to play Diablo II with mr. goh. Need a longer break leh.

edit: Goong is gone too. :[

What's for next sem?

So unlucky. One of my classes for Spring 2007 is cancelled again. First, Product Management. Now, Real Time Decisions with Resource Planning Systems. Why like that? :[

To be continued...

Fall 2006 Final Schedule

updated
MIS: 12/6, 3:30-4:20PM, SH 125
Finance: 12/12, 1:00-4:00PM, BH A53
Marketing: 12/14, 8:30-11:30AM,BH A53
Production: 12/19, 8:30-11:30AM, UC McConomy

It's HELL week.

This is by far the MOST STRESSFUL and BUSIEST week in my life!

1) Finance midterm (FRI) - 2 toughest topics!
2) Marketing presentation (FRI)
3) MIS presentation (FRI) - hell to prepare even 1 presentation...
4) Marketing case competition (SAT) - this is not for "pray pray" (translates: play play) ok!? and we have hell lot of shit to do. and the judges panel is freaking me out! both marketing and oral comm professors? NOOOOOOOOOO

BAH-GA-GAGAGAGA-GA-GAGAGAGAH

Other less hectic stuff:
* My Spring 2007 schedule! --> brought to you by scheduleman!

** My sister and I started on this continue-the-story game. so one of us write a paragraph of text and the other continues from there to create a story, back and forth, blah blah blah.....IN CHINESE. This is our progress so far:

Edit: For the completed short story, see next post by me.

Now it's my sister's turn to cook up the story. (Notice there's both simplified and traditional chinese...)

KnitBitz like shitz.

*Sigh* I feel like I made a fool out of myself today. It was my sales talk and I wanted to sell knitting products. But I was so bad and appeared very very underprepared. There's some truth to it though...I only came up with the speech at around 5 this morning. I rehearsed after that, just like how I was in my bad news presentation before midsem break. I felt confident, until the very last minute...it's as if I made a wrong step forward and fell right through a pit, a very deep pit, an almost bottomless pit. I just wanted to do better than before!! But I didn't and I failed terribly. Sad..

I need to get my mind off this. Quite a depressing life leh...

Stupid stupid stupid...

Stupid Webcams!!

So the Logitech webcam that I bought from mr. goh 3 years ago hasn't been working since last month...you know, the black/white screen. *Sigh* This weekend, my sisters came to visit me! I was sooo happy. They took me out yesterday and got me a new webcam. Logitech again. Was happily setting it up last night so that I can talk to my cute little niece on MSN, until I realized that the installation cd that came in the package contains ZERO bytes of files in it!! And I thought that my cd-rom wasn't working! Good job, Logitech. So I went to download the software from the website instead, installed it and guess what...IT'S STILL NOT WORKING. There was video image, and I could hear sounds as well, just that the MIC'S BROKEN. Two words, LOGITECH SUX. (In fact, mr. goh has a Logitech webcam as well, newer than my old one, and is also not working!)

Sad and disappointed...my sisters had to take it back to CompUSA today and ask for an exchange. We've totally lost faith in Logitech products, so got the Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000 instead, same price. I was happy, it's black and looks cool, and I thought that finally I could have a working webcam.

But NO.

WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING!!?

Midsemester break!

YAY YAY~ this feels like the last day of school today...heh but we're actually just halfway through the semester. Just had Marketing midterm yesterday, I think I did pretty well overall. :) This morning, I had a bad news presentation for Oral Comm. and I did quite well too! :D So happy me.

But there's still a lot of work to do. Well, I have to finish my written analysis for the presentation today. I have to work on the logo and web designs for Consulting Club. I have homework due next week. I need to keep working for the different group projects I have. Lots and lots and lots... And my sisters are visiting soon, so I need to figure out how to use my vacuum cleaner before that. Of course, I never miss a chance when I could just relax and have fun (myself) hee.

I was quite disappointed that I didn't get into UCC Solutions. I just got a very generic email saying that too many people applied and I wasn't selected. Disappointed because it's something that I really want to do and am excited just by thinking about it. It is frankly, I believe, the best experience that I can get in my entire college career. At the same time, I was also kinda relieved, because I'm trying to take part in multiple projects this semester, and I'm not sure if I will be able to fully devote myself to that task. Nevertheless, I'll apply again whenever they are recruiting, I can't stress how important getting into UCC Solutions is to my future.

I think I haven't been actively looking for a job recently. I submitted resumes for a few interviews. Got rejected for one. Haven't heard from the others. But I know I don't stand much chance. Those companies are top, and they only take the best people. With my current cumulative GPA, I'm not signaling to them that I'm one of the best. And although it's said that recruiters don't focus too much on GPAs, I still feel that it's a major factor, which is very disappointing. I hope they would consider major GPAs more than cumulative. At least in my case, it's not fair to look at cumulative.

It is also not fair to not consider candidates who will require sponsorship to work in the US. What, unless you are super duper good then maybe I might consider letting you come work for me? Even for internships! L'Oreal's marketing internship program requires all applicants to be US citizen or PR. And they still say they are an equal opportunity employer...yea right. Regardless of what those stupid requirements are (I don't meet the min GPA anyways), I just apply and see if I'm lucky enough to find someone who appreciates what I do. *fingers crossed*

Sigh.

I cook.

Started watching Cooking Master Boy again recently...and I was inspired!! All the oishi Chinese food...*DROOOOL* So I made fried rice myself!!!

Undergraduate Consulting Club

*Yosh!* I am now a member of the Publications Committee in the Undergraduate Consulting Club! There are basically just 2 members on the committee (excluding the VP): one responsible for editing the content of our monthly newsletters, the other for designing the website, all promotional materials and layout for newsletters - that's me. :)

So for the next meeting, I need to have: *preliminary design/template for club website - theme, color scheme etc. *possibly redesign a new club logo

Had dinner with the entire board at Sun Penang in Squirrel Hill on Sat. Pretty new and decent Southeast Asian cuisine that is near campus (and more authentic than Spice Island imo). I ordered Penang Char Kway Teow, and it tastes almost identical to the ones you can get in hawker centers in Malaysia/Singapore. Strangely, my marginal utility for char kway teow diminishes very quickly (as compared to other food, even instant noodles). It has always been so and I never knew why. Heh, took me a lot of determination to finish everything on my plate. I really should have ordered Penang Prawn Noodles instead, because that was my first choice! But I don't know what made me change my mind in the end. Still not good at socializing with people. Hope to do better at our next social event.

I'm so glad that I finally got a board position in one of the clubs I applied for this year. I really needed that title on my resume, hehe. Still haven't heard from SIFE, even though he said he would get back to me by the end of the week which was like last week. UEA still hasn't posted the list of open board positions yet. Sigh, I'm quite surprised at how inefficient some of these clubs are.

My next major submission deadline is this coming Friday (Oct 13), applying for UCC Solutions Consultant position. So exciting! UCC Solutions (formerly known as CMU Solutions) is the ONLY student-run organization (it's now part of UCC hence the change in name) that offers REAL CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. Other projects that I am currently on (UMO and SIFE) just feels like "student/school projects," but this is something...professional. It's gonna look great on my resume and definitely something awesome to highlight in coverletters/interviews, especially since I'm applying to consulting firms. I really want to get in!!

edit: Link to current UCC website.

Architecture sucks.

So I recalculated my GPA WITHOUT ALL Architecture (or Architecture-related) courses, and guess what I have a 3.51. And I'm pretty proud of myself! Everything is A A B B, except for Econ Theory, which I got a C. But Architecture? It's C C C C all the way (couple of Bs for drawing). Sigh.
I blame Architecture.

Another Friday Night Dinner

entree: rice & eggs with green beans again! chilli is always a must.
served with: bak kut teh with too much dark soy sauce
dessert: no more Jell-O...only corn left. *sniff*

Internet + TV + PS2

So excited!!
Now, I just need to get my webcam to work.....

!@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*...

edit:
I think my webcam is just....dead.