Thursday, August 25, 2005 - Procrastination!!! :

Being rather bo liao today. So as the "bo liao" me was surfing the net, this is what I came across! Haha! I have heard of the word but not really sure what it is. Cheem word to me. So in order to improve my vocab, lets look at what procrastinate is! =)

pro·cras·ti·nate
transitive senses : to put off intentionally and habitually
intransitive senses : to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done

Hmm, lets get things done!

* * *

Procrastination hurts many aspects of our lives as singles.
So why procrastinate?

Reason for procrastination. Knowing the cause, we can find a cure easier? =)

Hopelessness
You are frozen in the present moment, forgetting that things were better at one time and not believing that they will be better in the future. You feel your lack of motivation is unending and irreversible.

Helplessness
You are convinced that your moods are caused by something beyond your control: fate, hormone cycles, disease, genetics, other people's evaluation of you, etc.

Overwhelming Yourself
There are three ways you can overwhelm yourself into doing nothing.
- You may magnify a task until it seems impossible to tackle.
- You may assume you must do everything at once rather than breaking the task into small manageable units to complete one step at a time.
- You may obsess about everything you have to do and haven't done yet until you are paralyzed and overwhelmed.

Jumping to Conclusions
You jump to the conclusion that action will not make you feel better because you are in the habit of saying, "I can't" or "Yes, but...."

Self-Labeling
The more you procrastinate, the more you label yourself as "a procrastinator' or a "lazy person." When you think this is the "real you," you automatically expect little or nothing from yourself.

Undervaluing the Rewards
You feel that the effort to complete the task (almost any task) would not be worth the rewards. Your blue mood makes you feel that nothing counts or is worthwhile. This torpedoes any sense of fulfillment or reward.

Perfectionism
You will settle for nothing short of the best or the most magnificent performance in anything you do. Thus, you defeat yourself with inappropriate goals and/or standards and settle for nothing.

Fear of Failure
You think that making an effort and not succeeding would be a great personal defeat so you refuse to try at all. You may also evaluate your performance strictly on the outcome of an event, rather than your personal effort during the process. All you can control is your personal input to the process, not the outcome. Once you concentrate on the process rather than the outcome, you can learn from mistakes and attempt to correct them in the future. This keeps your self-esteem off the emotional roller coaster of outcome.

Fear of Success
You feel that any success is based on chance and you can not keep up that success. When it comes out that you are really a "loser," the rejection and pain will be worse because you did succeed.
You may also fear success because you anticipate that people will make even greater demands on you after your success. Since you are convinced you must and can't meet their expectations, success would put you in an impossible situation. Therefore, you try to maintain control by avoiding any commitment or involvement.

Fear of Disapproval
You imagine that if you try something new, any mistake or flub will be met with strong disapproval and criticism because the people you care about won't accept you if you are human and imperfect. The risk of rejection seems so dangerous that to protect yourself you adopt as low a profile as possible. If you don't make any effort, you can't goof up!

Coercion and Resentment
You feel under intense pressure to perform--generated from within and without. This happens when you motivate yourself with moralistic "shoulds" and "oughts." Then you feel obliged, tense, resentful and guilty. Each task becomes so unpleasant that you can't face it. As you procrastinate, you label yourself as "lazy" or "no-good." This further drains your energies.

Low Frustration Tolerance
You feel and act as if you were entitled to success, love, approval, health, happiness, etc. Instead of persisting patiently over a period of time, you go into a frenzied state of panic and/or rage when life presents you with obstacles. Your frustration results from your habit of comparing reality with an ideal in your head. When the two don't match, you condemn reality. It does not occur to you that it might be easier simply to change your expectations than to bend and twist reality. This frustration is frequently generated by "should" and "ought" statements. While walking, you might complain, "For all the miles I've walked, I ought to be much thinner by now." Indeed? Why should you? Are you entitled to loose a pound for each mile you walk? Why? Maybe the reality is that you will not loose a pound for each mile you walk, regardless of the ideal in your head. This internal talk just adds to your sense of futility and increases your urge to do nothing.

Guilt and Self-Blame
When you are frozen in the conviction that you have let others down, you naturally feel unmotivated to pursue your daily life.

debido waiting for someone at 1:28 PM

Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - Thanks :

Last weekend, I was lost momentarily. Lost as I wondered if it was the correct thing to do. The path was very much of what my heart and mind wanted to follow. But the fear of the consequences weights upon me. I was looking for someone to talk to. Someone to relate to. Or maybe someone to reassure me. At times, one only need someone to be there, just listening. Thankfully, someone came along, though maybe not voluntarily. Lol. But the burden I placed upon myself was relieved. Just a word of thanks to all who has actually spent time listening to my blabberings. =)

debido waiting for someone at 12:56 PM

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - Disturbed.. :

Hi friends out there, sorry if I have been boring you with the daily happenings of my life. Lol. Been trying hard these days to actually live a simple university student life and trying very much not to complicate my life by thinking too much.

Ack. But now, I am currently mentally disturbed. Lol. --> jame's blog entry. Was chatting to james last night on his entry; but on a not so extensive manner. For me, I don't very much enjoy these 'intellectual debates'. To me, complexity kills. As least to how I feel, people who tries to voice their actual views, opinions or preferences, simply sparks disharmony when his ideas do not get across or somehow un-acceptable to another's beliefs. Of course, good diplomacy skills can play a part to ensure thatdisharmony does not happen. But somehow, its hard to know when one can go into extremes to protect their personal interests. Somehow, jame's recent post triggered me to offer my 'special attention' to it. Maybe I am just being oversensitive, but anyway, I will provide my views on all the disturbing thoughts that has surfaced within me because of it.

-- Warning: May contain disturbing content --
I don't really like the fact that people are digging up the bad past and continues rattling about it. Be it their way of relieving their classical jokes, it only serves to bring me to detest the victim of my unfortunate event even more. In a way, I blame the victim for bringing me to my extremes and casting that lingering shadow. Human beings makes mistakes. But doesn't mean they won't change. By bringing up those series of unfortunate events, inevitably they are trying projected to me the image that it will happen again given the circumstances. Making it worst, people I recently got to know seems to be learnt about the "legendary debido attack" hence paying a very respectable distance from me. This goes to show how horrible gossips and those "San1 ba1" can be. Are they trying to forewarn others simply because they believe that I have yet changed? Or do I have to announce to the world and promise everyone that it won't happen again?

Recalling, song asking me an interesting qns once before. Given a broken vase, would I choose to repair it or choose to discard it and obtain a new one. My reply simply, "depending on how much I value this vase compared to others". Unfortunately, my life journey till now wasn't very smooth-sailing. I had lots of ups and downs through my school life and have really lost friends along the way whom I value very much. I can only say that at times, time can eventually heal wounds but will bury those feelings along with it. People change as they adapt to their new environment. Those feelings of the past can only form a distant memory that one keeps close to their heart. Of course, if opportunties permits, one day, I will seek to reforge the vases that I once hold dear to my heart though I know they can never be the same ever again.

Since NS, I have been in constant contact with this group of "cha-pa-lang" friends. Lol. "cha-pa-lang" as its funny on how they can actually mixed together even though they come from a different phase of my life. Some from my sec sch, my JC and there is even one known through my JC friend as he was his NS senior. In the past, I used to think "the group" idea is rather warped. Even now, I can't say I am in complete comfort with some of them. Afterall, one may associate "the group" as his group but does that equals my definition of my group the same as his? "My friend's friend is my friend." How true is that if I don't even know your friend. My definition of a friend does not equate to another's in absolute completeness either.

To my "cha-pa-lang" group of friends; Don't use group pressure on me. I hate it. That includes your funny ideas of how to convince me to socially accept another person. Convince yrself that you have already FULLY accepted that person before doing so to me. Sometimes, it just makes me laugh when you can't even substain yr grounds that this person is worth the effort. The best I can do is offering my tolerance regarding this matter.

Finally, I get my mind off these nonsense that bother me since last night. Lol. I am deeply sorry is this blog entry is not a pleasant one. Pardon me if I offended anyone.

debido waiting for someone at 12:50 PM

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - The End of Twilight :

Finally finished my FYP blog and posted several entries to the site. Phew. Today is my free day and I managed to utilize it and actually focus on putting effort into doing some serious school work. Did meet up with some oac friends for lunch and then back to hall for more work. In the afternoon, the boredom got into me and I nearly fell asleep. From there, I realised I was lacking something! COFFEE! Endured till early evening when I went to JP to meet up with xiong and laoda for dinner; Not forgetting to get my doses of caffeine.

Finished up some school work and now, I am back at blogging. I think I am infected with the blogging virus. Been doing much research and the different types of blogs out there that I somehow feel that need to actively participate in one too. Its like a form of "fashion" these days. Lol.

Oh, just some interesting news to announce to ex-twilight players, if ever you all are interested. It seems the word-text game that we all used to be quite involved in has reached the end of its supposely era. (Refer to link for more details.) Its interesting how a game such as twilight can bring people together and forge relations amongst one another. In a way or another, it provides views on how friends around you react when emplaced in a simulated environment. In a clan-based virtual world that twilight built upon, its interesting how values such as trust, 'betrayal', friendship, hatred are played out when one has to protect his personal interests. Luckily its now all in the past and lets pray it has not rooted itself in us and forged a shadowy image of another. =)

debido waiting for someone at 9:46 PM

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - Updated Look :

Finally, some comments? Lol. Actually realise that the html coding for the comments part was flawed. Never tested that part before. Finally added some touch to the overall interface. I will be creating a 3rd blog which I have to maintain; My FYP blog. Keep ya update.

debido waiting for someone at 11:43 PM

Monday, August 15, 2005 - The Morning Sun and The Dust :

Dead tired today. Had a morning lesson at 8.30am today and was at home on sunday working through the night on FYP research details which I had to present to my tutor. Un-naturally, I managed to wake up rather early and 'drag' myself to school. Its sort of a responsibility that I placed on myself for taking this module, Programming Languages. This module was a last minute addition and my consideration factor was being able to find a group to join in as the module involves a group assignment of max 4. Luckily, zhengguang was kind enough to let me join his group which had only 3 people. I was still late though. Lol. Met up with guang in the lecture theature. To my surprise, the lecturer was still covering a part which I had already read the notes. *Did not attend her lectures before as subject was just added* Haven't encountered anything difficult about the subject so I can still catch up. All the lectures seems boring to me as usual. =p

The day was quite draggy and taxing on me due to lack of sleep. Managed to have a brief discussion with my FYP tutor before he had to rush for lesson. Wandered around the school till the next lesson and finally, I am back in hall typing this blog.

Darn! When I came back to hall today, it was so dirty! A layer of dust seems to have covered every inch of my room. Grrrrr. I cleaned my room on FRIDAY twice before I left. And in a matter of 2 days time, the amount of dust that has settle in is... Grrrrr. And when I tried to clean the dust with my 'magic cleaner', walao.....

Had to be the construction going on near my hall that could have caused all this. Grrrr. Hope my sensitive nose don't take the chance to make a fuss out of it.

Sigh, back to work I guess. More FYP stuff to do after meeting up my tutor. Got to finish some stuff for the day before I venture to the world of dota. Lol.

debido waiting for someone at 7:10 PM

Saturday, August 13, 2005 - Zzzz... :

Finally manage to upload the few chalet photos onto my blog. Today has been a tiring day though.. Got to wake up slightly earlier to meet up with them for a swim at clementi and my nights seldom end early as I will be busy 'dota-ing'. Sigh, seems not everything going the way it should be. For school-wise, my tutor asked me to supposely start writing a program to download blogs. Erm, how should I go about doing it? School has become darn boring for me these days. What a dread. Zzz.

debido waiting for someone at 3:57 PM

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - Chalet Happenings! :

Went for a chalet from Sunday to Tuesday. Well, its a sort of belated birthday treat from xiong and advanced treat from james; chalet paid by xiong and bbq stuff by james. Overall, it was quite fun bah. Well, here goes on what that we went through.

#Day 1, Sunday - BBQ Day
'Book in' day! Went shopping for some of the bbq required items. The chicken and pork had been marinated earlier on Saturday. Luckily zhengguang helped to provide transport for us to East Coast Costa Sands Resort. Quite alot of stuff in which we are bringing there and a long distance to the chalet too. shawn was so 'lucky' to have his car on this day too. Well, we called it a bonus as we weren't really expected his transport help. So much for his transport service when he wanted his 'petrol' fees to be paid whilst claiming the car boot was full for external stuff. I think calling a cab will be even cheaper with the cabbie providing a friendlier service.

The day was eventually spent setting up the bbq pit and eventually enjoying ourselves to the food. Food was good to an extend but there was alittle too much as usual. Had to stuff food down into the stomach at the end and play games to punish people to finish the leftovers. Wasn't able to take a group photo of the people who came for the bbq only. I failed as the camera man to convince the group to take a photo. Oops.

#Day 2 Monday - Outdoor Activities
Morning and afternoon was mainly spent lazing in the chalet, playing laptop games and watching tv. I think we got to ban laptop games the next time. Not many people can participate. Idea of a chalet was more of a 'group thing' isn't it?

In the afternoon, we had a advanced james' birthday! Hope he enjoyed himself. We actually spent alot of time figuring out the auto-flash function of my dad's camera. The cake was actually waiting for us whilst we were trying means and ways to get the camera working.

Late afternoon, we went to rent our bikes and skates. Rental was quite cheap! Due to the price wars in the area, we got $7 for bike rental and $10 for blade rental for 1 day! It had been a long time since I last roller-bladed. Had a terrible time getting used to it that day. We cycled/bladed to the pier around East Coast and had dinner at the East Coast Market. *Dunno what issit called* Eventually, I went to swap my pair of blades for a bicycle as we are having a nite cycling/blading trip.

Late night around 10.50pm, we left chalet out to Bedok Market for supper. Our expedition leader, xiong, took us out on our bicycles and blades to venture into unknown territory. Took quite awhile before we eventually reach our destination. The journey was full of obstacles and dangers but we had overcome them. The food was actually not bad. xiong sponsered some of the food as I think he felt bad for making us go through all the unneccessary 'dangers'. We slowly made our way back to the chalet after that. We wanted to go back and stay up for the nite. But eventually, everyone fell asleep after waiting for one another to wash up and the day ended up just like that. Had been a good day I say.

#Day 3 Tuesday - Home Sweet Home
It was 'book out' day. Everyone was rather tired and didn't really had the energy nor mood to go for more activities. We boarded a catered bus service to bedok mrt stn and had branch at the market nearly. Soon after that, that day ended as everyone went home to grap a nap.

debido waiting for someone at 9:57 PM

Tuesday, August 09, 2005 - Happy 40th Birthday Singapore! :

Finally backed home. Went for a chalet from Sunday to this morning. Was so tired that I slept till evening time. Was quite enjoyable. Will blog about the chalet another day.

Wow. Time do fly fast. 24 years of time living in a small place known as Singapore. For me, I think I am rather lucky for now to stay here though, Being we are blessed with a safe, secure environment to live in, one should try to be complacent.

Well, Happy 40th Birthday, Singapore!

debido waiting for someone at 10:52 PM

Friday, August 05, 2005 - New Face! :

Whee.. Finally managed to make some changes to the skin of my blog. Nicer mar? Tag me if need any improvements. =p

Yesterday and wed night were the suay days of my school week. Hmm, my luck seemingly going bad? Well, on wed night, as I was on a bus which is going from NT* to a nearby coffee shop to meet up with xiong for supper, I was attacked by a vicious creature! The creature using his sharp claws nearly ripped off my right eye. Haha. Actually I was sitting on the outer side of the bus on the lower deck. A man who boarded the bus walked past me. Not sure how he actually "walked" by he swing his hands and actually managed to poke me on the right side of my face. He miss my eye by a few cm wor! A minor scratch on my right face. Till now, the area around still hurts. I did give him a glance when I dropped off the bus. Just to remember his face so that I know who to look for if somethings happens to me.

Yesterday, I had a race against time experience which was not necessary. Supposed to meet up my FYP tutor around 4.30pm. Managed to finish a document that he can take a look at and decided to leave hall slightly early to print them out. I stored the file temporary in Yahoo Briefcase and left hall for library around 3.30pm. Reach library around 3.45pm and manage to get a computer terminal. The loading was quite slow in school. To my dismay, there was a internal network error on Yahoo side! And the error couldn't be rectified. By then, it was around 4pm. I sprint back to hall to backup the copy in my email and sprint back to library to get it printed. That took quite an effort since I had not exercise for a long time. =p Was in time to meet up with my tutor. I was pounding my chest when my tutor informed me that he had an appointment and had to reschedule the meeting to another day. Ack. What a waste of my time.

Going home later. Having a chalet this sunday to next tues! Be probably blogging on chalet happenings on next entry. Oh, between, I am actually doing a research on blogs for my FYP. Here are some of the interesting singapore blog sites that I found. Some should be quite well-known I guess.

Retard Patrol: Blogsite which makes fun of pple on friendster. Ack, if you are unlucky, you are probably next.

Mr Brown: Blog with interesting and funny articles.

Xiaxue: She's actually quite funny. Quite like her entries. Made her my FYP research target as she is very popular in the internet community.

Teen4Sale, SPG: Hmm, blogs with a 'sex' theme.

Boing Boing: Top blog. Not from singapore though. But puts up interesting articles. Worth a look.

debido waiting for someone at 11:48 AM

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - Another Debido! :

I was actually browsing to my blogsite to see if there's any tags to reply. Not realising I left out the '81' in the URL, I typed debido.blogspot.com.

Guess what! There's another debido out there too! Guess I am not the only one liao =p Interestingly, the other debido likes 'me to you' bear! Me too! Argh, wanted to decorate my blog site with pics, does it mean I can't use 'me to you' liao?

Browse the few entries that the other debido posted. Not many though, and it seems he has not posted for nearly 1 year liao. But I am the older debido, haha. Since one of his entry in 2004, he mentioned going thru his 21st b'day. =p

I think a friend of mine went to tag his board. Lol. 'Jonathan from ddp' group. So you who is out there reading my blog now, I am debido from NT*, studying computer engineering. Please don't mistaken me as the wrong debido. Heh.

To the other debido if you happen to drop by: Don't mind if I do use 'me to you' ah! =p

debido waiting for someone at 7:21 PM

Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - Study Woes.. :

I miss my house tv. Not that I can't watch tv in hall but feels awkard to watch in the tv room with other hall mates. I met up with xiong and laoda for dinner today. laoda looks tired. He rebuked for saying that my IA was too short to experience the 'sadness' of the working world.

Well, I can't say he's wrong. Sometimes, we discuss the issue between, 'Is working or studying better?'. Of cos if we have the selection to choose to slack, that's even better. However, it is usually an option that is not avaliable to those not born with a silver spoon. For us, studying is but our means to ensure a survival in the near future, that we can find a better job to maintain our lifestyles.

The pros of studying is of cos the chance to have fun, and have more time to spend on our own. What studying requires is a self-discipline to spend adequate time to actually revise and do the provided assignments and projects (which sometimes can be quite a killer). Then, comes the exams which are suppose to test how much knowledge we have acquired during the semester.

Here, I feel the examination is definitely a flawed system. In NT* SCE, We have a lot of competition as many 'foreign talents' (40%) that has infiltrated our education system. In singapore where the number of people are so few, we are just normal university students trying to obtain a decent degree. The high competition and the supposed parabolic curve used to determine our results have ensured that the chance to obtain a decent degree has been much reduced. Be it computer engineering as a tough course, it is unable to yield satisfactory 'fruits of labour' as the job market for IT is saturated with cheap labours from other less developed countries, much less with a not so decent degree.

The working world is a phase in life in which everyone experiences, be it a lifeless cycle or tiring part of life. I actually quite enjoy the short period of working life that I had. The art of enjoying this long phase of our life probably lies in finding a job of interest and having a good working environment. Sometimes, one finds it hard to have the best of both worlds. Probably that's when a positive attitude comes in.

Well, I am looking forward to my working life, that's if I can find a decent one with a not so decent degree that I may graduate with.

debido waiting for someone at 6:48 PM

Monday, August 01, 2005 - Days of My 1 Week School Life :

Wow. Been a week since I last blog. Got complained by sharin for being slow. =p Been travelling to and fro home and school for the first week, hence not really able to find some time to do serious blogging. Well, many interesting events happened for the few days in school. Mostly ending up in frustrations. Going to start going through them now in this blog entry.

Screwed-Up Timetable
Been more than half a year since I attended lectures. The time slots for the different PEs are really screwed up. Although most of us has timetables which looks quite relax, the time slots had lots of breaktime in between, and we ended up having lectures starting as late as 8.30pm. Reason being the school is trying to ensure that there is no clashes in between PEs. I have 3 weekdays ending as late as 6.30pm and 1 day, 9.30pm. Luckily I am staying in hall, else probably I will end up reaching home close to midnight.

Inconsiderate Student
Some idiot was actually sleeping in lecture just now. If he was having a peaceful sleep, I wouldn't have really mind, but he was snoring quite louding for at least for half the lecture. It was so irritating that I wanted very much to go and wake him up then, but I was seated in a distance that will take an effort to reach him.

I wonder why does these people bother even coming to lectures if they are actually sleeping or ain't paying attention during lectures. It would probably have been more constructive if they had spent the time doing something else than to waste time by being present in the lecture and disturbing the order in the area.

FYP
Met my FYP tutor last week's thursday. There was another person called doc. poh around. Apparently, the change in title for my FYP was due to the fact that doc. poh made the suggestion to my tutor. Graphical Visualisation of Weblinks. Now my problem will only get bigger if I have to develop a tool for it. I seriously think I am not yet competent to do it as I hardly have any idea on how I could do it. Its a pioneer project afterall.

We had a short discussion which ended up with me, needed to research on blog sites for a start. Been looking through some of singapore's hot blogs these days. Will post my interesting findings in my next blog entry.

Friday Gatherings!
Met up with agilent IA friends for lunch at the bioscience cafe. We were supposed to meet up at 1.30pm but gr actually went there at 1pm with his friend. By the time we gathered, he informed that he had his lunch and is leaving with his FYP partner. Ack, wasn't it supposed to be a gathering lunch? Never even waited for us. Sigh. Food at the cafe was food court price and the food didnt really met my expectations that day. Had a really bad ulcer which was killing my appetite. We had a nice chat which ended in 1 hr where the majority had lesson at 2.30pm.

Sri Langka crabs that are bigger than my palm. Some says they (the crabs) have feasted alot during the tsunami event to grow to such an extend. =S

Finally met up with phq temp staff, shirlynn, sharin and junhan! chongjin, takewai and chris came along too! Been such a long time since we actually last met. junhan has the most apparent image change since we last met. He said it was due to his jam band image. Looks stylo! shirlynn and sharin are like sisters. So happen that nite they were wearing pink! We had crab feast that day, actually 4 crabs! Even with the killing ulcer in my mouth, I had no problem trying to feast. The crabs are actually larger than my palm lor! Sri Lanka Crabs! Yummy. shirlynn and chongjin took some group photos. Wouldn't post them since shirlynn has already done so. =p Everyone enjoyed themselves bah. Looking forward to the next such gathering . The days we had as temp staff was really enjoyable and fun! =)

Gtg to do some work. Continue blogging another day.

debido waiting for someone at 8:24 PM