MRC Camp

Hello! The last 3 days have been hell but then it was memorable. MRC camp finally ended just now. It was quite meaningful to me but i ended up really lost. Don't really know how and why i am lost by yea, im just really displaced.

First day was just full of test for me. LOADS of break which is like the most boring part of the camp. The test are quite challenging but i managed to figured it out for most of them. So my first test was outdoor system setup. I was given a 2hour period to settle this outdoor thingy but i managed to complete it within 40mins. Wei Liang was that booths operator. When i stepped into the classroom for the outdoor system, i already noticed something really wrong. THERE WAS NO AIR CON! So i ran to the distribution box, realised it was all down, then fling them all back up. Good thing the aircon came back up. Laid wires until very nice when suddenly i realise i am missing one XLR cable. Wei Liang said that what i need is already given. After some thinking, then i realise that im suppose to parallel the speakers outputs. Readjusted the wirings, then started to connect everything up. When it came to powering on, no power. Grabed a testpen and started opening the power extension cord. Started with the plug and omg! the wiring is out. Put it back then went to the extension side the opened it up. OMG! Its out too! No wonder no power. So setted up everything then i had like 1 hour 20mins of extra time. The bad thing is my next period is break -.- So total boredom until my next period, lunch. Had some food which i cant remember is what. But heck, at least after lunch i have something to do again.

My next period was a test in hall. It was chapel setup test. Managed to set everything up but i took quite some time. Then went up to the cage and i was timed to fix back the video section of the cage. That took me like 15-20 mins i guess and all the stupid freaking BNC to RCA changers are all spoilt. Then was the light mixer. Set it up in like less than a minute. They remved the DMX512 head from the wall point, unscrew the monitor, remove the power plug and plug in the other end of the DMX512 to another port on the video mixer. Programmed it and voila done. Then long long break again-_-

After that was dinner dinner we had err can remember food too but anyway after dinner was my LT test. Hao Ting was testing me and there were 2 other people following me, Ivan and Brandon. First up was Ivan. HT's first question was whether he knew how to turn on the lights in LT4. It was really very funny when he wanted to setup the LT system in the dark. He had some difficulty setting up everything so HT asked Brandon to go help him. After Ivan finished, it was Brandon's turn. He was good and managed to set everything up. Then i thought it was my turn but NO~~~ , It was Ivan's turn again. Made me so gan jiong. This time round, HT challenged him to a time limit and he made it within 5 mins. Then after Ivan's turn, HT asked Brandon to help Ivan dismantle and screw up the LT system. Then HT asked me "Zhen Ning, how long do you think you need to set up the LT system?" Obviously i could not say like i need longer so i also said 5 mins. BUT THE SYSTEM WAS SCREWED MORE THAN ALL OF THEIR SYSTEMS LA. Then i had to work in the dark. Only light source was HT's handphone with this camera light. It was really looking with my hands in the end. Good thing is i still managed to finish everything in 5 mins.

After LT, i went to the outdoor system room to take a look at Shermaine's progress with the outdoor system. I would say that although she did not really perform well, she is already trying her best. I was locked out of that room after awhile because Wei Liang was uncomfortable with me around cause maybe i would leak info to her.

So after that it was shoer time. Went to the sports complex to bathe and then went back and sleep. Gave Babi chong my sleeping bag to sleep on and i slept on someone else opened up sleeping bag. My tail bone hurt like nonsense while i was sleeping and i was experiencing cramps and such while sleeping. Did not really slept well. And the air con was like so cold that i had to go and turn it off halfway through the night. Sometime around midnight, this group of people took torch light and shine aroudn the room and they were like whispering "XLR cable la" then i was like "wah lao ehh"

At 5am, TADA, the lights were turned on and WL made all of us wake up and assemble outside MR room. We were going to play treasure hunt? Not sure what game but it was this game where u must find clues which will lead u on to the next clue. My group started off with this clue, "where little mermaid lives". At once we went over to the sunken gallery. walked around that area but found no clue. Then went up to the pool deck and found one clue but it was not the right clue that we were suppose to find. But anw we just took it. Then we were like stuck. I walked around the sunken gallery scrutinising every speck of dust and FINALLY, found this stack of paper pasted onto the wall. Grabbed it and went on to the next clue. We got stuck at the 3rd clue. It said "BACKside attack". We went to the hall, to the back gate to everywhere we can think of but found nothing. So in the end we decided to skip it since we found other clues without even finding their previous clues. Half way through, all of the teams got real frustrated and started to share info and clues. We wandered around to the various venues we exchanged with the other groups and finally, we managed to find all the clues except for the back side attack one.
The game was stopped halfway cause it was getting late and we were suppose to eat breakfast already. For breakfast, we got Nasi Lemak. It tasted like heavenly stuff. Wait everything tastes heavenly when you are hungry. So after this was my theory test. we had to sit in that room for 3 hours. I was Piaing through everything at full speed but in the end still cannot finish. Towards the end, the remaining people in the room started to talk and just don't care about the papers at all. It was quite funny.

Lunch was fried noodles. The serving was seriously so little and i was not full. But no choice. Then came the video lesson. We had to come up with a 1 min short clip of Rock AC withint 4 hours. At first i thought, hmm should be quite easy. But then once i started to do, its like ehhh WAH SO HARD AHH! The funny thing was Jeffrey. He was sitting beside me at the G5 when Poof went the screen. WTH! JEFFREY!!!! WHY U MAKE THE G5 TURN OFF!!! The best part was we didn't save it-_- But nevermind, HaoTing came back to turn it on and in no time, Jeffrey made it turn off again. % !@! !$ But anw, we got it done just in time. Quite satisfied with it but zzz, videoing really SUCKS big time.

Then had a short short break then dinner. We got hor fun for dinner which was quite bad because it has all dried up. Almost wanted to add hot water to it but decided that im too lazy.

After dinner, we had games in the hall. We were splitted into 2 teams. The game was such that one of us was blind folded and the person up there has to guide them through a maze. Was quite difficult for me especially when it came to my turn to be blindfolded. I actaully lost balance and fell-_-. So sorry guys. Had a debrief after the game then we got back our test papers. I was the top scorer with a score of 87%. Or was it 82%. hmm cant remember. But anw, quite happy with my marks (:

We shifted the base venue to 2.13 to sleep. I was just really tired that i slept within like 30mins after we reached the room. Everyone was still so high and stuff and they were playing card games and using their laptops. At around 4am, BOOM THE LIGHTS WENT ON AGAIN. Reuben and Hao Ting came in and made us all go to the hall. We were given this team challenge to setup chapel within 3mins. The first time we did it, we took 30 mins because of all the screw ups of the mic. Packed the thing in like 10 mins. Wah all of us were like zombies in action. So zombified. Had to keep redoing and redoing and redoing but this time we planned everything. Cause we got 17 people, all of us grabbed one mic and did it. Along the way, we changed tactics from time to time and soon our timing got better and better. We had once where we actually did it in 2 mins and 53 seconds. Quite fast i must say. The hall was very hot while we were doing it and i think i developed slight rashes. Quite itchy and pain.

Lunch came and we were treated to good food this time. Nasi Brani and ice mocha. Enjoyed it real much. But after lunch we continued doing the chappel setup. All in all, we did chappel for like 22 times. Enough to last for the next term.

After that, we were asked to pack up the cabinet and after that we had to do fun-o-rama setup. The fun-o-rama setup was kind of large scaled cause it spreaded throughout the school. Once we got everything setted up, we tested it. At first there was no sound on one of the horns so i had to like run around the whole school to hear every horn. Trust me its tougher than runing 2.4km. Strange. everything was connected properly but why was there no sound? I ran back to room 3.6 which was where our amps were. Tried and tried but no sound. Then i flicked a switch and WOW! GOT SOUND AND SO LOUD! haha! We did not turn on the amp thats why. Ran down to ask Reuben to check. As Reuben went around the school to check, Zhong Xian was like talking crap into the horn. Like conversation with someone then somemore so loud. Quite funny. After the checks, we packed up and ZZZZZZ coil the super duper long cables that are flying around the school.

MRC camp was declared over after the Fun-o-rama thingy and some briefing. Stayed back to eat dinner with them and 2 seniors came back to visit us. stayed on till like 10pm then left school. Took bus home with Shu Ting and when i got home i was so freaking tired that i felt like just going to sleep directly. Its really that tiring.

Hello! I just donated blood Its rather meaningful actually. So at first when i entered the hub with my consent form and IC, i had to go through a check by a nurse to see if they can find my blood vessels. Bernard and me were lucky as we were guys and the nurses only had to look at the vessels from the outside and we were ready for the donation. Jovia, Sam and Jiang Fan dropped out halfway for various reason. Then we had to fill up this form which was asking about our health status. They were like asking when did i last corpulate. Well answer is NO...Never ever before. Admin stuff later was going through a medical officer which we had to wait like real long. I think bernard, me and soemin waited for like 45mins before we could see the medical officer. Finally it was my turn to see the medical officer. Walked behind the screen and tests were carried out. The guy who was checking my health status circled this AIDS thingy and said that it needed 12months for the AIDS virus to act up. Then he cancelled my no answer and circled yes for me. I was like "huh? i didn't have sex and never used drugs before?" Next was testing for HB (which i don't know what is that). The nurse used some prickly little mechanism and turned it and shoot at my finger. Felt a short sharp pain and i saw blood. A tube was used to absorb the blood then the nurse dropped the blood in the tube into this blue solution. Not very sure what was she testing for, but anyway, the fun/scary part was next.

I went into the station for donating of blood. The nurse sat me beside this very friendly J2 girl who was also donating blood. It was her second time already and she was very friendly and kept comforting me. Obviously i was SUPER NERVOUS! The nurse came and started doing the necessary stuff. she took like dunno how many tubes and then this bag for the blood and gave me iron tablets. Itstarted off with her labelling the tubes, which she was very quick at, then she injected me with this anesthetic which really hurt alot. Then she took out this BIG needle which was connected to tubes which led to the bag. I was like WOAH! SO BIG?!?! She pushed the needle slowly into my body. It felt really weird. The early entry part is just like feeling nothing. Then as the needle makes its way in, it starts to feel as if some weird thing is crawling around inside you. But thanks to the anesthetic, it did not felt very bad.

I started to exercise my hand and very soon the whole bag was filled. Another nurse came to end the process which included the withdrawal of the needle. Amazingly, i felt nothing at all during the withdrawal. I was even wondering if has the needle been taken out of my body. Sat there for around 5 mins while applying pressure to this cloth which was above my insertion area. Then this man came to bandage my wound and i was ready to go. Felt a little giddy at first but after awhile, i was feeling fine already. Hope that this pack of blood would save someone's life.

Hello again! Guess what? Im FINALLY soldering at home again!!! Yeps. Feels real good to use back my own soldering iron and i really got to admit, it is way lot better than MR's soldering iron. So this time what did i solder? Err a circuit. Yea its a circuit that i sort of modified from another circuit. Its a audio amp.

Schematic:

Then i began planning how am i going to put the components [sorry for the bad picture, my phone's camera really suck ): ]

So then after planning, I took everything out from my drawer

And started soldering according to my plan

See all the black holes, they are markings i made to tell me what goes where.

Lets play spot the difference, see if can u spot the difference

In case you are wondering why are there only like resistors and a 8pin socket for the opamp, its because the circuit has no caps and the mosfet and transistors are yet to be installed cause i need them to be on a heatsink which needs to be drilled. Unfortunately, i have no drill-_- Anyone willing to lend me a drill? A benchpress would be better (:

Hello! This week was seriously very very fun! Its the last week of exams and next week there is not exams, except for chinese-_- YAY!!! And the week after next would be holidays which is already "reserved" for studying for terms.

Yesterday, there was Passion AC. Setup was almost the same as Rock AC just that the on stage work isn't as bad as Rock AC. Okay actually the on stage work is almost non-existent. We just need to help CF set up their things right and then its ready! The stage monitors were run through the mixer before going to the stage so that the monitors were controlled by us.

I did videoing and the camera stand i got was some crappy crap crap one. The pan mechanism was "okay" but the tilting part of the mechanism is like very "SMOOTH". It jerks alot whenever i want to shift it and its just super hard to get that nice angle i want to take cause i can barely control it. But anyway just did it lor. Took videos of the singers facial expressions, the drummer's expression, pianist expression, guitarist expression, computer girl's expression and the audience expression. For the starting part of Passion AC, there was no lights shining at the audience so i could not take the audience's expression. Tried turning this night shot plus function but still too dark. In the end, it was like 1 and a half tape full of the performers and pastors expression. Only until halfway through then the lights came on. Then YAY! Can take the people's facial expression.

Towards the end of the whole Passion AC, the performers started performing again then i saw the back lights go on and off and on and off in some rhythm. I was wondering if it was pre programmed or not so i pass the camera to Colin and ran to the cage, okay im very mean. Then i realised that it was just Shermaine pressing it but not bad leh at least can catch the tempo. HAHA I TOOK OVER THE LIGHTING MIXER!!!! WOOTS! It was seriously like playing O2JAM but its LIVE!!!! Had so much fun with it and trying to do some impromptu stuff like changing the lighting tempo and the pattern of the way the lights light up. This song, Take It All, CAME!!!! YAY!!!! Its Sam's favourite song and i knew the song well, cause when she was around she would play it like again and again AND AGAIN for the whole of morning pre assembly-_- BUT, cause i knew this song, I could like make the lighting effects so much better la! I loved this song especially the part that went "take take take it all, take take take it all" I made the lights like blink at some tempo with the song. Wah i seriously love doing the colour lights, its really so much fun especially when the audience is so high. Good thing is i did not get scolded for operating the lights like that for me myself was worried that i would spoil it. I was pressing so fast that i think sometimes i made the light turn on and off at a frequency of 2-3Hz or so? But well im very honoured to be able to do the lights at the last part.

YAY! Im 17 today! Haha. Thank you Firedrake. Thanks for celebrating my brithday. I really thought that u guys won't remember my birthday but well, im so wrong. Its always so touching to know that you guys are always around for each other.

So how was my birthday? Quite touching i must say. Early in the morning, there was Samantha and Ryan's SMS in my phone wishing me a happy birthday. Aww, don't they seem like a couple? Haha. After that, when i reached school, nothing was much different from usual until halfway through chapel, oh and anyway, i miss the drums :(, Clement SMSed me wishing me happy birthday. Then i started thinking, hmm maybe not so little people dun know and remember my birthday afterall. Later on, i went to back stage and started talking with Nyssa (I didn't spell it wrong this time round (: ), Christiana and PK. They robbed me of my wallet and ransacked it! The first thing they took out was the EZ-Link card. Then wow! They wished me happy birthday. So nice of them! Then after that i got SMS from Sophiana, Jasmine and Jade. Thanks alot everyone (:

Oh then it was NAFA... The test that i predict i would fail for i think 2 more years. I jumped 245 for SBJ which is a freking 1 cm from an A, got 10.2 which is like 0.1 second from an A then got 40cm for sit and reach which is a C, then got 44 for sit up which is an A and got a U for my pull up-_-. FAIL. Finito.

Met up with the firedrakers. COOL STUFF! They bought me a cake!!!!! SO nice la! Aiya i seriously don't what to say and how to thank them. Just so nice of them. Then they were singing the birthday song so loudly, until i super paiseh. But its really nice of them la.

Well a few more hours to go before its gone, so off i go (:

damn weird. the blogger isn't working the right way. but i think still can post.

So RockAC is finnally over with all that hectic stuff to plan and organise and setup and bla bla bla. YAY! Its finally over. I was on backstage duty (AKA "Sai Kang" Warriors) yesterday for rock AC. It was kind of time pressing especially for the very very first contestant. We had to setup everything which included the drum set, bass amps, guitar amps EVERYTHING in under 1 minute. Well we had the help of he councilors to help us shift all the heavy stuff like the HEAVYWEIGHT bass amp. Its like 60kg.! So fortunately our task is to just lay wires and plug everything into the amps and mics. Amazingly, all of us managed to set everything up in like less than half a minute!?!? Wonderful isn't it, but if not for the council people, i doubt we can do it in such a short amount of time. So after this, it was less tough for us already cause the following bands did not have much variations from the initial setup. OH! the first band. They had this crazy drummer. Trance like i would say when he drums. Totally out of the world. I think he whacked one of the mics while he played half way and it shifted it. He was like yelling at us the mic while he was drumming and all of us were like, err what should we do? But in the end Wei Liang went up on stage to adjust it. Then came the Maksim wannabe. He is real good in my honest opinion. He played Nostradamus and Kolibre. AND DANG, Stage monitors had no sound for the 1st and 2nd half of the song. HAHA all of us at the back stage was like yelling into the walkie talkie, "TURN ON THE STAGE MONITOR!!!!!" Only until like halfway through Kolibre then TA DANG! got sound. I felt really sad for the pianist cause he was slightly off tempo for Kolibre cause he could not listen to the backing track, but well he got LOADS of praises from the judges. Good for him (:

Okay i got to go for now shall write more on RockAC a little later.

RockAC
It's your stage.

hello! quite some time since my last post already. Its finally friday again and it feels so good to know that it is a friday. This week has not been as busy as the others. Don't know why but perhaps its because im starting to get used to it already.

Im so looking forward to Rock AC and Passion AC. They are events that i crave to do because of all the technical stuff that MRC has to settle. Okay fine i don't sound right, but anw, there is a rehersal tomorrow and lets see what happens. The plan that we got is quite "big" in a sense that there are 3 projector screens that will be used during he event. Its like the the hall is not so big? To me the main item i would be looking out for would be the drum duet.

Had a good encounter with KSL today. Actually he is quite a nice person, quite funny too! I helped him tape people talking, okay more like i helped him interview people using the camera. The interview was on what we thought would be a ideal college and classroom. Some of the comments i heard are simply wonderful and i really hope that the teachers would at least consider them?

I stayed back late today till like 8 then i left the MR room. I was watching this super vulgur video in the room when suddenly the VP just popped out form no where. IT WAS SO SCARY! He was like, "playing games again ahh". Lucky he did not hear any vulgurities when he came in. So he talked a little then left the room. Really lucky that he did not hear anything that he should not hear.

Hello! Haha! I just realised that i spelt Nyssa's name wrongly as Neesa. I better change it in my previous post.

I just edited my blog's template. Added 2 new links and 1 video. I was the editor and cameraman of that video. Those girls interviewing were my team mates. This video is not a very good video but nevertheless, its the content that matters and yea, its created using movie maker. Its about poor and needy people. How they survive and what the society thinks of them. We met with some difficulties when doing this video because of the different public responses. Most of it were negative responses but there were some positive feedbacks. I remember there was this part where we interviewed this old woman selling tissues at a MRT station. The moment we took out the video camera, the people around us went " How can like that?!" Its really the mixed views that really bugged us. Fortunately, most of the people we interviewed were very open and they were willing to talk to us about why they resort to selling tissue paper on the street to survive.

I really would like to thank my teacher, Mr Chiu, who guided us along while we were producing this short clip and spending countless hours on teaching us the techniques. I would also like to thank my wonderful team members and their courage to take up such a controversial topic as their video project.

Hope you guys would enjoy watching this video and feel differently towards those people selling tissues the next time u see them.

Hello! I went to Sim Lim today! Cool right? Okay maybe not so cool. So any way, I sort of followed Reuben and Nyssa and Christiana tagged along too. Xiang Jun also followed us "on the MRT". Meaning she took the MRT with us to bugis then took it back home. A little odd. Went there to get my components for my new amp. Finally decided to build my next amp but will most likely start work only in the june holidays cause obviously i haven't got the time with all the tests and assignments. Reuben brought the wireless RCA transmitter to complain to the shop owner that it cannot transmit as far as it stated. Haha. So he got a swap and he got a more powerful transmitter. Honestly, i think that even with a more powerful transmitter, the signal cant really travel very very far. If its open space like the hall, then its possible, but if the signal has to go through walls, then very very unlikely. The logic behind it is that because the signal is transmitted in analog mode instead of digital mode, it cant travel far. Think of it as this way, if there is no wall and u want to talk to a friend say 10m away from you, obviously ur friend can hear. But what if there is a wall just right in front of u and u try to tok to your friend at ur normal volume, your friend would not be able to hear clearly what you say. Thats why i feel that it will still not be very effective.

So after visit to Sim Lim Tower, we made our way to square. First stop at square was this audio shop. Reuben was looking for a flight case for his recording mixer. So asked around but could not get a suitable one. While at the shop, i was so curious about all the diffrent cables the shop had although all of them were klotz cable. After that i went to 4th floor, i think, to get my chasis mount RCA female connector. Met up with christiana and nyssa then we made our way to Bras Basah Complex, is that how u spell it? Reuben found his flight case there and Christiana got her pens there. As for me, i bought a CD. Its called "The Sun". Its a chinese orchestra recording by HUGO productions and i must say that the recording is extraordinary. From there i left for home while Reuben, Neesa and Christiana stayed for dinner.

I was on my way home when i walked pass this temple and saw this old man sitting outside eating his dinner. Fond memories flashed back. I did an interview with him a few years back about how he find his life. He sells tissue on the street and it sorts of makes me sad. Although he seems to be fit and strong, i think deep down in his heart, he feels lonely.

Hey! Recently have been really busy and this has been a hectic week. Very very tired after every school day till the point where there is almost no energy reserve left for me to do my own stuff. Everyday when i reach home, all i can think of is homework and more homework. Piles of endless homework seems as if they would never be completed.

YAY! I passed all my 3 tests! But im not so proud of them. Heck. At least i passed all of them.

MRC has been getting real fun for me cause we are learning soldering! Okay i already have learned most of the soldering skills and know how to apply this skills but well its something intresting to me. Reuben's method and my method is a little different cause i always like to use the whole reel of solder while soldering instead of using just a few strands. But anw, he thought us the connections and the techniques in soldering. Soldering is fun, REALLY! Its just a pity that we don't get go solder with good cables like Canare or Belden cables. We got some Maruni cables. The other time when i was soldering the laptop sound cable, it was a Canare cable. It was really easy to work with. Maruni cables just melt upon heating. Suck.

On Friday, we stayed back to help out with the Rock AC auditions. Reuben brought his "wife" along. It was a KORG Multi Track Recording Mixer. It was kind of cool. The bands were not so fascinating and there was actually 1 band that was having an arguement within themselves during auditions. There was this drum duet and GOSH! THEY ARE REALLY DAMN DAMN DAMN SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER GOOD! Speechless is just the right words to describe their performance. After all the auditions, we had our own MRC audition. HAHA IT WAS SUPER FUN! I played Tong Hua on the piano and ZX was singing! Its really fun.

Hey! Sunday already! And another week is going to start. I so hate GP now! The teacher sucks, FULL TIME! First day of new term, she claimed that she is not the kind of person who really likes to mark assignments but now? SHE IS GIVING US LIKE SO MUCH WORK! Last week, almost all of her GP lessons are dedicated to us doing assignment and she not teaching during lesson. What kind of teaching is that?! If we go to school to receive education in this manner, i rather stay at home and study by myself.

All right, anyway, yesterday was guitar's Ritmous Acousticos. MRC had to help them with the sound thing again. Good thing is we did not screw up (: Somehow after the performance, i felt that guitar is really an instrument that is very very soothing. Or maybe its just the way the guitar people played it and their choice of songs. But really it was not a bad performance by them. Stayed in school till like 11+pm before i went home. I brought my laptop to school thinking that i will be bored while waiting, but in the end i only turned it on for like 30+mins? Played O2 jam in the room and when Reuben saw it, he was like "I want to play!". Funniest thing is that he only plays one song, Fly Magpie. He is not that lousy actually.

Next week there is like a GP package test and maths test. GP package test is more or less done last week all thanks to that GP teacher telling us wrong dates. Maths test is really quite bad. I haven't got a single clue what is MI and what is AP and GP and Sum of a Series. I really need to go mug now.

Hey guys! Well after the bad episode with MRC, things are starting to look better for me. Afterall, the people in MRC is all right to hang out with one. It has always been me and myself thinking too much and suspecting too much. Well now im starting to like MRC more and more.

All righty, yesterday was celebrations for international friendship day in ACJC. MRC had to tend to the back stage and overall i felt that it was quite okay with some minor errors. Tomorrow will be Movie Under The Stars (MUTS). Hope it will not hang and screw the whole event up like the other time.

Went to the Jurong Medical Centre yesterday to have my eyes checked up again. The doctor dilated my eyes and i so hate that process. I cannot see properly for a few hours after the dilation process! But anyway, the doctor said that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and the blood test indicated that there was nothing wrong with my blood too. He was pretty sure now that i was suffering from migrane. Well, I don't really know if that is true or not but i just hope that it will not strike as often as everytime it strikes, it really isn't a nice feeling.

Had OG outing yesterday to Five Star Chicken Rice 0_0?! HAHA! We were celebrating calvin's birthday! All of us were suppose to meet at 7pm but guess what, the latest person arrived at 9.30pm! Well that person is Amanda but hey, we can all understand why she is so late. So anyway, i arrived at 7.30pm and wow, only Dantong was there. But at the moment i sat on the chair beside her, Jessica arrived! So the three of us went to find a cake shop to buy a cake. I brought them to Mykes Oven and we bought this cheese cake. It was really very very very delicious! Yummy! So at around 8+pm, most of us arrived and we ordered the food. Calvin was a little crazy cause he wanted to eat 2 chickens. Of course that is insane so in the end we only ordered 1 chicken. amazingly, we finished all the food plus the cake. Shu Ying was there too with some guy whom i think is her boyfriend. But im not very sure. We were talking some random stuff and Jessica was saying something when suddenly *POOF* she disappeared. Upon further investigation, she was found on the floor laughing at herself. She fell off her chair! The people in the restaurant was like trying not to laugh at her! HAHA it was really very funny. Ohh how i miss the orientation times when all of us are just so playful and cheerful and need not worry about exams and studies.

Hello! Mugging week it shall be for this week. So many tests! Tomorrow, i will be having Chemistry test and friday and maths pre test and on next monday, its the real maths test. This is so horrible! Anyway, i returned Jade's laptop already and she sent an army to come and collect it with her. Woah, almost the whole family appeared with the exception of her father and her second sister. Well got her laptop back up but her keyboard is sort of screwd up now and i swear that its not caused by me.

Currently, my brain is being filled with chemistry formulaes which are hard to digest. Hope that they can diffuse into my brain tonight when i sleep on them (: Well today, i tested out my car batter powered CD player concept. I discovered something about that battery. It is acting abnormally which i do not know if it is right or not. The voltage is unstable and it does not have power. At first, the voltage of the battery was only 10+ volts. Under load it falls to below 9volts. Then i connected a super tough load, a 7.5ohm resistor across the terminals, and after awhile, the voltage returned to around 12V. It really is strange as i thought battery should always just give me a certain voltage and the power it can output should be a constant. Perhaps the battery is really spoilt. So in the end, i had the 7.5Ohm resistor connected in parallel with the CD player so that the battery is able to provide the right voltage for the CD player to work. I did some listening test. Background noise has significantly went down quite alot but there was still some hiss and buzzing when the music is of very soft levels. I was not very happy with the results as i had expected something better. So in the end, i scrapped the idea and thought "Dang this stupid idea, go get a proper DAC and a Transport or just a good CD player"

Woah i better blog today if not it will be at least a week since i last blog. Well did not really blog this week due to some emotional reasons. Loads of things happened last week and some of them are really not worth mentioning at all. Wanted to blog on Thursday, but after reading someone's post, it made me change my mind totally about it.

So last week. Went to Sim Lim Square with Jade! We went there to get her hard disk which she needed to replace the spoilt one in her laptop. We got a 80gb one and it costed her $93. I could not believe the price, it is almost a dollar to a gb now for laptop hard drives. Perhaps it is time for me to upgrade my laptop's hard drive to something that will last me long. Perhaps i will wait for the price of 120gb hard drive to drop to around $1 a gb. Then thats around the right time for me. So got Jade's laptop fixed and actually managed to retrieve her lost data in her spoilt hard drive. Im such a kind person la. Do all these for her. She wanted to treat me to something but i was like "NO~~~". How can a guy be treated by a girl? So totally wrong! Then we negotiated and stuff. But end result was still no. haha!

I got my PI back. It really is so stupid. I did not know that i must define difficult words in the PI and i did not really know that "attenuation" is a difficult word. Is "attenuation" really a difficult word? So any way, my PI needs to be improved on but i have totally no idea of how to.

OH OH! I got my gigantic battery charged already! But both me and my father gave up the idea of using our circuit to charge cause it was too much a hassle. He brought home a laboratory power supply from his office and we used it to charge that big big battery. We used constant current to charge it at 2 ampere. Took like erm 20+ hours to get it fully charged. And the 20 hours is because we could not take it anymore to wait for it to be charged so we increased the current to 2.5amps. Now i got a super big capacity 12V car battery and hmm whats in my mind? A amplifier running from it? Not likely cause 12V is seriously not enough to provide enough voltage swings for loud music levels. Preamp running off battery? Possible but i don't need a preamp. CD player runnign off battery? Most likely!

Next week and the week after is the full of test week. Total crap. Taking a break now from all that reading to blog. Okay, i better get back to mugging.

Aha! Back with blogging. Damn I have got this project work thing and i have this Prelim Ideas (PI) thing to settle by wednesday. Thats like so fast! The bad thing is that i have not even started on it although i have some idea of who am i going to do about. The problem is that i don't know how to write a PI report! ARGH! Stupid Project work. If i can remember, okay i will try to remember, to go to the library tomorrow and take a look at past year's project works.

Saturday and Sunday are the usual stuff. But hey! On sunday, my father and I embarked on a project to build a battery charger. It all started with my father and his flat car battery. One day when he woke up and decided to drive his car, his car decided not to start. So he called some number on his mobile, yada yada yada voom and WHALA! There is a car battery in my room! But then it was flat. I tried running a 12V computer fan and the fan spinned very slowly and the battery only read 9.6V with the fan load. So my father came up with this circuit which i could only manage to understand roughly how it works after my father explained like 3-4 times.

So we gathered all the components and started to burn solder! After around 1 hour plus, we came up with this. We only did the logic circuit part where the hysteresis was concerned. The big capacitor is used to simulate a battery.

The back side of the breadboard.

My workspace after a few hours. Very messy right!

Tested and fine tuned that logic circuit for very long. Changed a few components here and there and thankfully, there was this great software called LTSpice and it is free for download. Used it to run many simulations so that we did not need to keep changing components to get the logic pattern we wanted. By the end of the day, we got it ready and the next thing to do will be to add on the remaining part of the circuit.

So today there was chapel. A external band was here again. I so love external bands cause they really can play good music. I'm not saying that AC's Christian Fellowship is bad but its just that they keep singing the same songs until it starts to get a little bit boring. Setup, lay cables, connect this and that. Done. After chapel, keep everything. Intrestingly, the piano girl said thanks to me! I was quite shocked when someone actually thanked MRC for helping them.

Anyway, a long day awaited me and by the time it was halfway through, i was already half dead. Did not have a good sleep the night before. For PE, we had gym lessons. Jin Zhe was like "YAY!!!!!!" when the teacher announced it. Did some machines but there was very little time to go through the things i normally did.

This is bad, bad, bad. Although the doctor says that it is more likely of a migrane, how can i keep on getting it? I got it again just now and i just slept through it. So now my eyes are still sort of recovering from it.

I felt really bad today when i sort of forced my friend to say something out unwillingly without me really knowing that i forced him. I am very very sorry for that. I really don't know what to say or do but to appologise. There really is a problem with me. My words don't go through my brain before it comes out. It just comes out, like that. I must change, i must.

Today after school, i wanted to go home and do so many things. Like err try out a circuit i have in my brain, test that Jade's laptop is spoilt because of her hard disk. In the end, i only managed to do the second. I downloaded a copy of Knoppix, which is a form of Linux, and this copy could be burned into a cd and the whole OS runs from the cd. Im quite amazed at the usability of it and how user friendly for it to be set up.

Dunno what to blog about cause my head is still suffering from just now's headache. Better stop now.

Yesterday, i went to Jurong Medical Centre to have my eyes checked up. Woah that place is like a villa. It doesn't even look or feel like a medical centre. The atmosphere and surrounding air makes you feel comfortable and there is no medicine smell lingering in the air. There was no crowd so the process was quite fast. I left that place at around 4pm. So after registering at the counter, i had my eyes checked by firstly calculating and measuring the degree of astigmatism of my eyes. Next up was a machine that measured the pressure of my eyes. It blowed air into my eyes very quickly and my eyes could not help it but blink when it fires the pocket of air out of the machine's nozzle into my eyes. Next up, the doctor tended to me. I think he used some tools to look into my eyes. The doctor wanted me to do some tests and so more machines to test on me, actually only 2 more. This doctor refered me to another doctor to assist me with the tests. The first one was this machine where i had to stare a orange dot and notice the surrounding of that orange dot. if a white spot appears around it, i must press a button. Each eye took quite some time for the test to be done and it was quite strenuous on my eyes. After that test, the doctor applied some eyedrops for me which were suppose to dilate my pupils. The doctor cautioned me that for the next few hours, my eyes would not be able to see clearly and the images would be blurred. Call me a sadist but I found it pretty intresting for my eyes not to be able to see clearly. Around 40 minutes later, my vision turned very blurred. Aparently, my pupils has dilated, so the doctor brought me to another machine not to run another test but to take a photograph of the back of my eye. I had to stare into this big big lens which had some yellow light in it. The doctor said one two three and i blinked. Of course i was not supposed to blink but there was flash light! Imagine looking right at your camera's flashlight staring into it and then let it shoot you. Had a few tries and finally it was completed. Oh, the doctor also said i have long eye lashes but i don't really believe that. So anyway, i was done with my test so i went back to see the first doctor. He made a "partial" conclusion that my problem was more of a migrain and it had nothing got to do with my eyes. He made me do a blood test which i totally hated and was very afriad to. Shall not elaborate on that blood test part.

Okay lets move on to today. Reached school then i saw sam and shermy at the bleaches again with their MG friends. So went up to the cage and somehow i felt something wrong with the whole CCA group today. I could almost immediately guess that something happened the day before that is causing all this fire power in the house. Ignored it and just fiddled around with the mixer. Sam and Shermy did the mixer today. Nothing much but the laptop sound screwed up again. It screws up almost everyday now. "Someone" plugged the XLR that was coming from the laptop directly into the mixer without a convert to convert the XLR into 2 phonos. End up? The sound was totally cancelled out because of the mixing of the left and right channel into one channel. I was also quite stupid to actually wonder how will that work because the theory part of me tells me that it will not work right but the morally right part of me tells me to respect my seniors work.So lectures began and i figured out what went wrong with MRC the previous day. Well i'm in no position to comment on it so i shall just keep quiet but hearing the story "amazed" me.

Lessons and more lessons. Nothing intresting about lessons apart from that that Derek imitated the teachers in our school today just before the maths lecture. It was just hilarious. School ended at 4.10pm, yes its a very long day. I received a SMS just before i left school. Jade wanted to pass me her laptop for me to "repair". So we met at KAP and it was just a short meeting. Followed her to cold storage for her to buy $20 worth of food. She bought apple juice, kit kat and honey stars. Must be all for herself. Maybe she is going to eat it in such a way: Honey Stars mixed in apple juice with additional Kit-Kat to top it off. Yucks! Okay so i had to bring the laptop back home and THE LAPTOP FEELS AS IF IT WEIGHS A TON! Lugged it back home with care and started to debug it. I guess it will need a part replacement but will have to confirm that before making her invest on it.

Went to see a doctor to check out what is wrong with my eyes. The doctor did not really know but he suspected that there was some floaters in my eyes. According to the dictionary, floater is
"A speck or small thread in the visual field, usually perceived to be moving, that are caused by minute aggregations of cells or proteins in the vitreous humor of the eye." He refered me to a specialist clinic and the appointment is for tomorrow. Hope that nothing goes wrong tomorrow.

Samantha is leaving after this week for aussie to pursue her education. Okay maybe not really SHE want to pursue but her parents thinks that it is better for her to go to aussie to receive education. It is such a sudden and sad news when she told me about it. I can't really do anything for her but to hope that she will adapt to her new environment as soon as possible. Oh and find new friends too! Good luck to you Sam!

Dang my eyes are acting up again. I wonder what is wrong with them. It happened on friday and this morning it happened again. A patch of colourful dots appears in my sight of view and it blocks me from seeing things that are in the middle of my vision. Then when it fades away, my head starts to ache. Now i am actually typing without my spectacles on. I think it is time i went to see a doctor or on optician about this problem just in case it is something very serious.

So today. First day of "actual" lessons and it is a terribly long day. This morning, as i have to reach school earlier to help setup up the equipments for chapel, i decided to wake my parents up earlier so that we can leave home much more earlier. My sister was obviously against going earlier cause she would then reach school even earlier. But well, i still reached school anyway. It was rainging very heavily and everyone whom i saw walk to school were soaking drench. Alot of people was late and the best thing was that assembly started late for them. Thats a very thoughtful thing for the school to do. At least they understand that we students have difficulties getting to school if it was raining so heavily.

Chappel went on and i was doing the sound mixer again. I seriously need to let other people do the sound mixer. Throughout chapel, the piano sound was like so weird. On PFL, it sounded as if it was raindrops but then i could hear clearly the piano sounds in the hall, so decided that it was not a problem. After chapel was house meeting. I ponned it and slacked in the hall listening to the TCT group people discuss about the list of people competing in the swim meet. Miss Tay was talking to us about the new J1s who were joining MRC and then she made a remark that i was too noisy in chinese. Well okay i agree im a bit too noisy but at least the things that i was saying is not rubbish and useless. I am who i am and i will be who i am. No point changing who i am just for her. The most is that me ad her will never be able to come to terms. But i don't really care.

So lessons, lessons and more lessons continued. 3 hours non-stop lecture ranging from Physics to Chemistry to Maths. Half of chemistry lecture was spent doing nothing but talking cause there was apparetly some miscommunication between the lecturers and the first half lecturer did not turn up. Next up was GP and Chinese. Chinese teacher is really don't know what to say about her. The way she teaches is really just too traditional. Just don't really like the way she teaches. Then PE. We went over to ACS(I) to cheer for our schools waterpolo team as they compete with HCI. The cheering part was really very funny as we hijacked HCI's drum beat and used it for our own cheer.

It was pretty boring over there so when the beel rang, Xiang Jun and me went back to ACJC to help out with MRC. There was this World Bank talk held in school today so we had duties to do. actually i had no duty, but i found one by turning the LT4's door into an automatic one using manual means. In simple words, i was something like a door opener. People coming near to the door, i will just open the door for them to gain entry to the LT. Quite stupid actually. During the talk, because it was so boring doing nothing in the cage of LT4, Reuben kindly brought up a deck of cards and we started playing bridge and tai tee. The event ended and somehow we dragged on and on while keeping the equipments till it was near 7pm. Went home with Reuben and we mainly stoned our way home. Total sentences i talked to him was like around 15. Also don't really know what to say to him.

Yesterday the only thing i remembered is the great food! I attended my mother's cousin's son wedding dinner?! That is like a relative that is quite far away from me. I totally never met him before but well i enjoyed the food! Wish them a blissful marriage. There was abalone, shark's fin, big fish, great duck, prawns and wonderful dessert! Ate till my stomach almost exploded. It was simply irresistable. The best thing was that my table only had 8 people instead of 10 people. so i got to eat another extra bowl of shark's fin and alot more extras!

I had badminton trials yesterday. Did not get in again as expected but at least i tried again. Was not really disappointed or anything. I learned a new song yesterday too! Although it really wastes alot of time practising it, it really is fun! I shall try singing it to people on monday and see what their reactions are.

Something scary happened to me after badminton trials. My father came to pick me up. Then on the way home, I saw Miss Koh's car! WAH SHE WAS TAILING MY FATHER'S CAR! In my opinion, she is quite a hostile driver. She was filtering here and there and everywhere!

Okay now i need to practise my piano so that i can help my brother practise his violin.