Nico

My parents and I made our way to PS to exchange our analogue cable set-top box for a digital one, which made for a great excuse to get more channels. So now, on top of getting all the basic digital channels that we were missing out on - like the History Channel and Discovery Travel and Living – we got ourselves loads of other channels that we didn’t have before, including all the channels that are produced by Discovery Networks! I know I sound really geeky right now, but they’ve got tonnes of good stuff in there. And all this just as I’m starting my 2nd semester…

What impeccable timing.

I’ve bought The Simpsons Game for PSP as well, and I resolve to make it the last disc-based media that I’m gonna purchase this year. Well, fine, unless one of my favourite bands releases another album…

C’mon, cut me some slack here alright?

Anyway, I spent way too much on CDs last year, which means I’m sorta running out of money right now, hence the New Year’s resolution, which is kinda pointless really, since I can’t really buy anything if I’m already running out of cash, but I resolve to keep it nonetheless.

As for The Simpsons Game, it’s really cute, but I’ll post more on that later, after I find the time to go through a little more of that game.

For now though, there’s gonna be a lecture in 10 hours’ time…

Semester 2 is starting soon, and after printing out my timetable earlier this evening, I realised that my timetable is actually pretty crappy. I’ve got lots of 2-hour breaks in between my lectures, so for a day that only contains just 5 hours worth of lessons, I’m gonna be staying in school for 10 hours. But at least I’ve gotten myself a module to break the practical joke that is Thursday. The good people in the FoE office gave me a pre-allocated timetable with a 7-hour break in between 2 lectures.

And to think I actually wished them “Happy New Year” in one of my e-mails to them…

Anyway, looking back at the month-long break, I really think I should’ve stayed at home and slept and slacked a lot more, but I ended going out way too much to be able to do that. Nonetheless, it was really fun.

Catholic Awareness Week (CAW) is coming up, and with that comes the CAW Rally, provisionally themed: “Hearts On Fire: Let Him Shine”, which is an elongated version of last year’s rally theme. Well, at least it’s not something like “Hearts On Fire 2″ right? That would’ve have sounded rather inspired……

If there was one thing that did sound inspired though, it would have been the rally band. I don’t know about the previous years, but this year’s band rocks! We’ve got ourselves a semi-professional group of musicians working together on the guitar, keyboard and bass! The band would’ve been complete with Nick Lee on the drums, but he couldn’t attend the first practice, so I filled in for him, and I was wowed away. The band worked so well together, and we really had fun. And it was constructive fun. We finished the programme that Jeremy had given us before time was up, and we spent the rest of the time just jamming and playing rubbish songs. I forgot how much I missed jamming in a studio until that day.

And then, there was another outing with my FCG, which I resolve to – but will probably never – attend regularly during the term. It was badminton, followed by another card game marathon at Alex’s place. I have not had a good opportunity to exercise since I had gotten out of the Army, so badminton was definitely good. It was somewhat comforting to see that my level physical fitness hasn’t entirely gone to the dogs yet.

So just yesterday, I got together with some of my O-Week OG-mates and took a trip down to Sungei Buloh (thanks to Nikki and Jude who organised the whole trip). And I thought Pulau Ubin was enough. In the end, it was nearly as bad as I thought, mainly because it didn’t rain this time and we went to Ang Mo Kio after that to play pool. But even so, it was pretty fun. We climbed up this observation tower, and picnicked there. Really, it was actually a picnic with food – yet another one of Jude’s hare-brained ideas, except this time, it’s wasn’t that hare-brained. We sat there, ate, talked, and had a pretty enjoyable time. And then there was the hiking, and all the encounters with what everyone else thought were komodo dragons.

They were actually monitor lizards.

And so, that’s all the fun I’m gonna be getting for this half of the year. Lessons begin in 2 days.

Now I’m wishing that those monitor lizards were komodo dragons…

I’m writing this after 22 hours of rousedness, having spent the night at Ben Huang’s extremely well furnished home with Ferdinand and what’s left of the Science FCG, and I knew I didn’t need a sleeping bag, because it’s New Year’s Eve – nobody’s gonna be doing any sleeping. So we stayed up all night as part of a 12-hour gaming marathon, playing games like Saboteur, Super Munchkin, and Taboo. And even though I had won only one game – Taboo, with Jeremy and Samantha – I had a ball of a time. And I made one rather curious observation; despite owning my set of Saboteur cards for quite some time now, I have yet to win a single Saboteur match.

Yes, I know; I suck.

And you thought the new vacuum cleaner had just arrived…

So, it’s a new year, and a new year means new stuff, and this time, it’s for my drumkit. Previously, I had to use this horrible impromptu-looking ”mute” – if you could even call it that - (it was essentially a piece of black fabric and 4 wooden clothes pegs) for my splash cymbal, and one of the 2 hi-hat mutes for my crash cymbal, so my hi-hats were still pretty loud. That was until a few days ago, when I discovered that the good people in the Ranking Sports store at Bras Basah Complex actually stocked rubber cymbal mutes in their slightly cluttered shop that sells a rather eccentric mix of music and sports equipment. So I bought 2 of those, a full felt kick drum beater, and a pair of decent felt washers for the hi-hat clutch. The latter was from Swee Lee, which was just opposite the store. $5 for a couple of miserably small pieces of felt. What a rip-off that was. So right now, I’ve got an extremely decent looking practice set in my room, which I can use at night with absolutely no fear of waking the dead from their sleep.

Recently, I’ve embarked on a little (currently on-going) project to achieve the impossible – I am going to clean up my room (GASP!). Yes, I know. At first glance, things looked pretty bad, until I opened up the cupboards and drawers. Then I thought to myself, “I am going to do this… Next year.” Unfortunately though, that happened last year, which means I’m gonna have to do it now, plus I’ve gotta somehow perform a magical apparition of some empty space in my cupboard for all the new notes and textbooks that are gonna be streaming in throughout the next 3 to 4 years, assuming I don’t kill myself in order to avoid cleaning up my room in the first place.

Currently, the top surface of my cupboard and its top shelf have been done, but that’s pretty much it. There is empty space – but it’s in the wrong place (on the top of my cupboard). So I’ve still got 2 more shelves (the middle shelf looks especially tragic), the table, and small bit of mess beside my drumkit. The latter is actually composed of all the schwag that everyone threw at me during Matric fair last year – yes, it’s still there! And I’ve gotta do a disk cleanup and defrag my hard drive as well. It took an entire day on my old P2, and I have no idea how long it’s gonna take on this baby, but I hope I’ll be able stop procrastinating long enough to find out.

But for now, I’m just gonna keep staring at blank space and continue my Sleep-Deprivation-Experiment till 11pm so that I can resume my usual sleep cycle.

Now we know why design school is known as SDE.