The gifts

I had been thinking of what to get my friends during their graduations for quite a while. Ideas sprung up once in a while, many of them I deemed too creative or too much work. However, time doesn't wait and it didn't. Tripos passed and the design project ended. I went for a very happening trip in Greece and came back to Cambridge. I got my results and was exhilirated. People left and came back from their 'graduation trips'. And still nothing concrete came out.

I thought, perhaps the memories we had were sufficient. Since friendship shouldn't be all presents and gifts. I have been pretty objective over the past 2 graduations, I might as well just get through this one.

Then it struck me. These people were leaving. It was three days before the first graduation ceremony. We were busy packing up our rooms during the day and gathering every night till early morning. We were trying to treasure as much time we had as possible.

It was also a good thing that the body seemed to require less sleep when it doesn't need to study. I was up by 7am every morning despite sleeping pretty late.

I was trying to piece together a photo collage for individuals. But it was way too late. Then it struck me that the whole thing wasn't about individuals in the first place. It's everyone and the fun we had, and the joy we saw people had. All came into place one by one and I was fortunate enough to have zw&my as my packaging team to present the gifts in a more presentable form an evening before graduation started.

I hope they like it.

Although groggy at most times, the exercise of making the collage was a nostalgic ride through the memory lane. Going through my albums photo by photo, i went through the unimaginable kitchen i had in Basing, I saw how happy we all were when we first cooked, I saw how blur we all looked in our first undergraduate year, I saw how proud ms and ryan were when they made that indescribable horse for Mable in his what was then the best room we can think of, I saw the jc the teapot (i must say i was very tempted to include but feared for my life a bit more), I saw the sun, the rain, the snow, the balls, the feasts, the formals, the cookouts, the trips, the adventures, the sunrises, the sunsets... Thank you all. =)

Graduation!

I thought i'd make a small compilation of photos of people graduating. Since it lasts over three days, let's see how updated i can get.

St. John's

Queens' College

Christ

Magdalene


Fitz

New Hall

Robinson

Homerton

And then the three days marathon came to an end...

最亲爱的朋友, 祝你们一路顺风..

Magdalene Mayball

All nighters seem to be the really 'in' thing for my life now. I've never been a fan of staying awake for more than 24 hours and have never done it before before this year. The Magdalene Mayball was in fact the third time I've pulled an all-nighter this year - the first being the LAN party and the second the design Project.

The Magdalene Mayball was the first mayball i've been to. I wouldn't deny that I, like most other people forking out a huge sum of money to attend it, had my doubs. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the night. It was splendid, awesome and utterly enjoyable. (lol, the last sentence sounds so british hahaha)

Of course most of the fun came from the great company that we had. Adding on to it was the thought that friends made over our undergraduate years will be leaving in their own separate ways in about a week or so.

Magdalene Mayball is the only white-tie ball in Cambridge. It meant that we had to rent our white-tie attire. I spent a significant proportion of the day trying to figure out where each component is meant to go. I'd say it was an experience. Not very fun. And we did the buttons the wrong way around initially until we were in the queue. It's a good the shirt was cleverly designed to allow such changes to be made relatively easily.

We had WeiShu come over before entering the ball to take some pictures with the dslr. I would say things weren't too well organised here among our huge group but we got managed to get some good pictures taken. I didn't bring my dslr in because i thought it didn't quite fit in to all the ultra formal attire. I also din want to spend the whole night taking care of my camera.

The night passed really quickly and I'll try to remember what happened. Since everyone was hungry by about half past nine, the first stop was the thai curry rice. This was followed by hot dogs and burgers. I had a thai curry, two hotdogs and a bacon burger. That was pretty satisfying.

We then moved on to some of the mini games they had on board. These included a two-person swing. There were just enough guys and girls to pair up to get on board which was pretty good. lol. There was also a shooting game and some 'hit the coconut' game which was impossible to score.

We wandered around that reached the master's lodge where we found a comfortable area to talk and rest our legs for a while.

We then proceeded to night punting which was pretty cool. The camb felt so different at night.

After punting, people were feeling cold and we headed over the silent disco. I thought it was pretty cool. We managed to some videos of us fooling about in the 'silent' with the help of the light from the phone. haha

From here on.. it was quite a blur to me. haha I remember drinking a few more glasses of the honey-tasting ginger rum, feeling quite sleepy at times, took a photo by the professional photographer, had a foot massage which was very enjoyable and then it was breakfast time.

Breakfast was a sit-down breakfast with newspaper. And you can see how excited we got. hahaha

We lasted till the very end of the ball and had the survivor photo taken. After that there was a long queue going out of the ball, so we thought we might as well take more photos among ourselves. I think meisheng's new camera was pretty good. and the lighting during the early hours of the morning was very good for taking photos.

We basically kept taking pictures until the security asked us to leave. Meisheng, hong sheng and i decided to over to meisheng's room to compile the pictures since everyone seemed to have very crazy schedule planned ahead fo them. Then came the idea of going to cafe nero for coffee - which we did. But anyway that's going beyond the scope do the mayball.

It would say it was very enjoyable. The food was excellent and the number of people in the college was very comfortable. Now i need to see the survivor photo to see whather it is worth the money.

I'll probably put up a slideshow of the photos soon..

Pride

Always fun on hindsight. it feels really similar to climbing the Pinnacles really. =) 

Design Project 2009

I thought i should jot things down before the memory fades and disappears into nothingness.

The design project is basically a 5-week exercise to design a plant with a team of engineers. Groups were allocated randomly and it happened that i had a 5-membered group compared to the rest with 6-membered. Since groups were random, it was expected that there would be people with a range calibre and personality.

A few highlights of the project:

1.) The first 3 weeks were largely very painful and uncomfortable because my laptop was unrealiable and repeatingly tripping off. Hence i was working in department most of the time or in the computer room in magd. I'm a person who likes working in the comforts of my room so those days weren't the best days. 事倍功半  >.<

2.) The new computer came about two weeks before the project ended. I took it as a blessing as that was really when things started kicking in in terms of report writing.

3.) I think i generally enjoyed coordinating a generally pretty functional team. I also realise that my ability to spam people has been put to good use in this project. 

4.) I knew that there might be problems with people working together, however i wouldn't deny  that I hugely underestimated the magnitude of the issue. This was increasingly obvious towards the end of the project when people started getting stressed. 

5.) The extensive amount of planning i laid out as the coordinator was primarily aimed at eliminating the need to lose sleep towards the end of the project. It was also a fallback option for any hiccups that might happen. What the plan couldn't account for were two major hiccups. and that was exactly what happened within the final two days of the final project.

6.) That meant that my 'functional' team worked in department from 9pm on Wednesday till 4pm on Thursday. without sleep. The only time i left the department was for a subway break which took 15 minutes. Other than that, i was either printing stuff in the computer room or in the tea room, in front of my computer working my ass off. That was 31 hours of solid work.

7.) I realised, once again, that the human body and mind is incredible. I never knew i could work continuously for such a long stretch of time, under such intense time pressure, with such focussed concentration. 

8.) I don't think there was another time in my life where I sweared that much before. 

9.) I found being politically correct superbly annoying towards the end. and i think I became pretty straightforward after a night without sleep.

10.) I realised that there are selfless people and selfish people in this world. And the way to treat selfish people is to be nice to them and get the stuff you want from them and let them do whatever they want. There is no need to explode on them because it doesn't help. It's pretty ironic.

11.) I realise that I prefer commitment to calibre in terms of 'qualities' of people. To put in the effort to draw up something using a program one had no former experience of, even if it was presented looking less neat than others, is an achievement worth commending.

12.) We won the 2nd best prize for the presentation even though only 2-3 hours was spent preparing it. Our final round of practise ended at 1.25 and the presentation started 1.30pm. I presented my area design as one of the 'unique features' of the plant. Since a large amount of skepticism had arisen regarding the use my recompression of oxygen rich stream, I put in backup slides with 'print screens' of the sources of information I found that deemed the design acceptably safe for use. It happened that the first question asked was on the safety of the oxygen rich stream and i conveniently brought up the back-up slides. The audience enjoyed that and we got a round of applause.

13.) I think i'm pretty proud of what the 'functional' group has achieved. I say 'functioinal' because there was a very obvious split in the group. I'm going to print my Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (PID) out and put it on my wall as decoration!

St John's College, Cambridge

Picture taken by Ying. 

I'm thinking of sending in my computer to the computing service because the fan is stuck and my computer keeps overheating and tripping. I'm not sure how long they will take to replace the fan but I hope they don't take too long. Anyway, i was backing up my photos and found this picture.

Post Tripos 2009 - Visit To Durham

After a revision marathon of about one and a half months, my 3rd year Chemical Engineering Tripos Exams came to an end on thursday. The end of exams are less exciting this year as the 'year' has yet to end, with the design project commencing on Monday. 

Anyway, I came over to Durham for the weekend to deliver shan's stuff from home as well as to get away from camb. I took the opportunity to take a few shots of durham.

Calm riverside - very typical scene of durham. These pictures were taken on the first evening when we were on our way to dinner. I actually wanted to take a few 'sunset' shots but the service at Nando's was extremely slow. Furthermore, the sunset was just a very undramatic dimming of light intensity - so nothing dramatic to shoot. 

My cousin, Long, came over the next day and we went Durham sightseeing. We headed over to Durham's Cathedral and the Castle College. The 3 black and white pictures feature the cloisters of the Durham Cathedral. If you think it looks familiar, it's featured in the Harry Potter films. 

I like the backlighting effect on this one. 

Then we saw pretty flowers along the way. Long was vain but I shall not put his picture up. LOL

And finally, we had duck from Goldmine, London for dinner. Isn't it awesome?

It was a good trip - nice, lazy and relaxing. Shan's house was a bit too messy (even for my standards) so i was in her room most of the time. heh =P Other than that, I would be on my computer clicking away, watching series, catching up, gossiping or playing game with Long. I also managed to cook dinner yesterday. It's good to cook when you have proper stoves with actual fire, compared to a lousy single hob back in Camb. 

Chuisan came over from Stockton (?) so I had lunch with them before going to the train station. The restaurant, called Fat Buddha, had pretty interesting interiors but i think i'll upload them once i get back to Camb. I'm now on my way back to camb and I've managed to get my laptop out and connected to the wireless internet. ;-)

Muji Delivery!

Most of you would have known that I'm a fan of Muji. Since the academic year started in September, I have been searching for a clock of reasonable size to replace the previous green clock that went missing over the course of storage during summer. I don't wear a watch so when in my room, I'd have to go over to the laptop or find my phone to look up the time. However inconvenient it may be, it wasn't until a few days ago that I found this on Muji's website. I've never bought anything through the Muji online system but have frequented Muji stores in Hong Kong, Singapore and London.

Muji products aren't the cheapest thing but I just love their simplistic (and often interesting) design. I guess it gives a similar feel to why people like Macs. The clock costs about £7. I wouldn't complain about its price. 

When the email came through on monday night saying that it has been dispatched, it said that it'll come in 5 working days but when it arrived when i checked the plodge today (weds). That was quite a surprise.

Yea, as you can see, i bought a few other stuff. Since there was a delivery charge to it, I thought I'd throw in a few pen and a file. I like the file - it's sleek and looks professional. Though it's expensive for such an item. 

And yes, if you've noticed they've spelt calendAr wrong. =p