And some updates...

I have unofficially graduated!! :D

My FYP report was handed in about a week ago and I have been chillaxing and having a ball of time since then.

Here's our final report and my lovely team-mates for FYP together with my supervising prof (he's freaking tall!! haha). We had disagreements and we did quibble once in a while. But it was still an awesome time doing this one whole crazy project with them. I believe all of us have improved our Excel skills tremendously, all thanks to this FYP which required us to deal with a spreadsheet with almost 1,000 columns.

There is this wall in UTown where students can write down their random thoughts on what they wanna do before/after they graduate. I think it's a pretty cool idea and we read a lot of crazy things written by students who were probably trying to de-stress during the reading week. Here's some examples:

 This is on the "before graduating, I want to..." side:

 And this is on the "after graduating, I want to..." side:

How cliche to end school like this but oh wells, there's gotta be some kinda proof that I've survived four years of uni life. ;)

And what have I been doing lately? Eating of course! Hahaha

First there was Durian Fiesta at Goodwook Park. The full review can be found at Gladys' blog. I'm too lazy to type anything. Here's just a picture of what we ordered:

From top to bottom: Durian Mousse Cake, Durian Tartlet with Nuts, Durian Strudel and Durian Crepe
Personally, I liked the Durian Strudel the most as there's a good mix of the crispy pastry and the fragrant durian. Mmmmmm~

And then there was Mia's birthday celebration at Saveur. They opened a new branch in Far East Plaza! :)

Then I finally got to try Ampang Yong Tau Foo along East Coast Road with Gladys. Again I'm not going to review this place. ieatishootipost (and perhaps loads of other reviews out there) did a pretty neat job of that. I am really being lazy. Haha. So here's just a photo of the pretty babe with the food :) Oh I do like their sour plum drink a lot though. Not too sweet and not too sour.

And then there is this Singapore style hoptpot, JPOT, at Tampines 1 that I tried with Mia. Their menu is pretty standard but they have a high tea set for $9.80+. It comes with a soup base, choice of rice/instant noodle/vermicelli/laksa noodle/pho, vege, crab stick, luncheon meat, choice of marinated beef/pork/chicken, two small cheese sausages and two prawns (which were really fresh). Oh and a tiny amount of Enoki mushroom!

I chose the JPOT Superior broth as the soup base while Mia chose Silky Porridge, which I have never seen in other hotpot places. Personally, I'm not a fan of porridge but surprisingly when I tried it, it was quite tasty. The downside however, is that it'll get really goo-ey after a while and it probably sticks to the base of the pot as it tasted burnt. Yucks..
Both Mia and I love meat! And as you can get from the photo above, the amount of meat given in the set is barely enough and so we ordered another plate of marinated pork. :) We also tried this thing called fish noodle. The name was interesting and we had no idea what it was and so we ordered it. It's that whitish, triangular thing on the plate. Turns out, it was just fish paste filled in a plastic bag, with a small hole that the tip for us to squeeze the paste out into our hotpot and form long strands like noodles. =.=
There was nothing exceptional about its taste but I have to give it to the restaurant for coming up with such a creative way of selling fish paste. But we realised that the hole at the tip was too small and it took us too much effort to squeeze out every bit of the fish paste. And so, we ended up opening the originally tied-up end of the plastic bag, scooped the fish paste out using our spoon and plopped them into our soup base. We had fish balls instead of fish noodle. Haha.

Another new place that I tried was Brussels Sprouts at Big Splash @ East Coast Parkway. It's a Belgian bar and bistro with pretty good mussels. :)
Their mussels come in small metal pots and there's a variety of gravy/soup that you can choose from in which the mussels are cooked. I tried Mariniere (onion, parsley, butter, celery, white wine, cream) and In Blanc (same as Mariniere less the cream) and it was awesome! No photos though as it was late at night. They have some special package prices from 10pm-12am for two buckets of mussels. And the fries is free flow!! So boys can definitely have a full meal here. Haha. Unfortunately I didn't get to try their wine or beer as the guys that I went with have work the following day. I would probably visit the place again and try mussel with their Belgian beer. :3

The end is near...

If this semester have been any longer, I would probably have died. But I'll die in good shape ;)

I only had three modules this semesters, but two of them were extremely intensive with assignments due every week. And because the due dates are Monday and Friday respectively, I find myself not sleeping at all (or at most an hour's sleep) on every Sunday night and Thursday night for about two-third of the semester. And because of my timetable, I'll sometimes just skip lunch on Mondays and Fridays.

Well guess what, my weight has finally reached the target (I am not going to reveal the number, but it is what I have always weighed back in Year 1 and 2). So now, I am going to aim for another 2-3kg loss and try to squeeze into this dress below without any sign of suffocation:

This dress was bought online quite a while back last year, when I was still delusional about my weight issue. I could barely fit into it and my tummy was bulging out! *gasp! runs and hides in corner* 

There was no way I could comfortably walk about in this without self-consciously sucking in my breath and trying to hide my tummy. So I would occasionally try to squeeze into this piece at home and use it as my motivation. Hahaha. I guess I'm on the way to conquer it! :D

Some updates relating to school:

My final semester is more or less over for me! Save for one more class on Friday and a final year project that is about 70-80% completed. There was supposed to be a quiz next Monday for one of the heavy workload modules but the professor decided that we have real done quite a lot over the whole semester so he cancelled the quiz! Woohoo~~

And so, I am pretty free now!!! Liberation (partial) at last!! No more burning midnight oil for the next few months before work start! :)

Changes

After 4 years of uni life and tons of group projects, I've come to realize that my attitude towards group work and cooperation has changed drastically.

Hotmail has been recently upgraded to Outlook and I was sorting through all the project-related emails since year 1. Back in year 1 and year 2, I was the "enthusiastic" one, who'll blast emails to everyone in the group reminding them of the deadlines, what should be done, and when we should meet blah blah blah. And most of them were equally motivated and so there were not much issues getting projects done in an orderly manner back then.

And then, I met more people for various projects, I realized that different people has different working style, the most common would be procrastination until the last minute. And I came to understand that, sometimes, there's no need to be so kan-chiong and start on the project early, especially if most of your group mates are the procrastination kind. And human beings are lazy by nature, I procrastinate too. So as long as the project gets done eventually, I really have no issue if everyone just starts working on it one day before the deadline.

So now, with less than 2 months from graduation, I have become a serious last minute worker and most of my projects are finished in less than an hour from the submission deadline. And if my more "enthu" group mates tried to get the ball rolling, I just can't be bothered anymore. :p

Busy busy busy

School is getting more and more intense lately, as many deadlines draw near. There're 9 assignments/projects/presentations due in the coming 2 weeks. And I have been attending meeting after meeting for the past two days. Which is utterly crazy. In fact I'm in the way home now with another online meeting waiting for me. :(

It's pretty sad that we students (or maybe it's just me) get so caught up with school work and meeting deadlines that we've forgotten some of the little fun things that we used to enjoy as kids/teenagers. My prof uploaded an assignment this afternoon and it is due next Monday. Part of the instruction of the assignment is this:

"To improve your chances of getting a high score on this homework, please attach an envelope containing $100 SGD."

This is a really weird request! My first instinct was to check the assignment questions, thinking that the $100 might be something that is needed to do the questions. But nope! That wasn't the case.

I was so bewildered by this strange request that I sent my prof an enquiry. And here's his reply:

"Hi WenYi

Yes, you're right. $100 doesn't go very far these days but I thought I shouldn't ask for too much. And I'm not very fussy about whether it's in 10's or 20's :)

You know I'm only joking right? Monday next week is a special day .. :)"

That's when it finally dawned upon me that April Fools' Day is just around the corner!! To think that it used to be one of my favorite days of the year and now, it has completely slipped out of my mind because so many deadlines are breathing down my neck. Sighhhh.

But oh wells, once I pull through this two weeks things will be much more manageable. I'll only have to worry about my FYP and after that, it's gonna be 4 full months of pure bliss, happiness and laziness. :D

More updates about my vacation plans when I'm more free! :3