Been feeling a little relax and a little guilty too, but i dunno why. I ll just have to get used to this nice feeling. Anyways, I am taking my own sweet time to edit my fyp thesis, after one week of editing..ta dah...one page more! haha..but changed alot of stuff in the middle too. Especially stupid careless grammar mistakes.

 

Went bowling with merina, sherrine and huiling ytd at tampines safra. Been such a long time since i last met up with them. And i bowling really sux. According to huiling, i played half the game only cos the other half of the time all went down the longkang. Haha. Looks like i really need more practise. But then i paired up with merina, the best player of the day and our scores improved! or rather my score improved! haha. Then merina went to get a haircut despite initial reservations, like working adult muz keep longer hair to look more mature and stuff but it was absolutely not true. Initially the haircut looked normal, but then with the magic hands of the hairdresser and some mud, she transformed the hairstyle into something really stylish and more outstanding. Wow.

 

Bought a nice pooh polo-tee from giordano ytd too. I m all ready for work at tech. Haha.cos their dress code for the top is minimal polo tee, according to them cos smtimes we gotta make presentations and if you r looking tired, a smart polo tee will at least wow the audience. Haha.she's really cute. I guess one of the reasons that made mi accept the job is that the hr pple are really friendly and funny too, in their own way. I think sf fits into them really well, so i hope she really gets the hr job. Well, i muz be really obedient for the first few mths and wear polo tee and after that dont care le then can wear anything so long it's covered by a jacket. Haha. One thing i like about the job is i m going to save loads of money and fuss on office wear! No need to iron clothes, no need to wear heels, no need to dress nicely cos everyone looks the same in jumpsuit. Yes i have to jump into the jumpsuit, which really takes some getting used to cos the one i wear for my fyp lab is kinda just like a labcoat. This one has the bunny boots, the headgear and everything. It is really gonna be loads of fuss if i need to go and pee! Which means i cannot drink so much water! Die. ahaha

 

Tmr i ll be gg for a gourmet bbq with mich at sentosa. Thanks michie for the invite! oh i m absolutely looking forward to this like once in a lifetime chance! haha.gotta blog abt it after the event man.  

 

 

 A year ago, i wasnt there to celebrate with you

It felt so sad.

So i m going to make it up this yr,

and it is going to be smthg unforgettable.

So that doesnt make my job seem difficult.:o)

We shall see......:o)

I am also turning 23 soon,

or expecting more respect in your more aged position

  I love my 23 yr old boy and his 23 yr old teddy.

happy birthday, my love.

== chewy ==

I loved doing my fyp actually. As much as the stress i get each week from the weekly meeting with boss and how fickle minded he can be this week and the last, but somehow he always convinced us that he meant the same thing all along, and we interpreted differently the week before. The art of convincing. Why they dont have such modules? How about the art of resisting yourself from being convinced? And i m gg to feel the heat soon if i dont edit my fyp thesis by friday.

 

But i felt that i really learnt alot the past 2 semesters, even though the experiment basically involves around the few equipment. But expeiment is just a part of the whole process. Though brainless, with just a click here and here, there are little details always to take note of, which affects the results, and it is always a constant learning process to find out the best method to get the most accurate readings, or the best readings.

 

The 1^st meeting

 

2 semesters ago, i came into imre for the 1st meeting like a week before the school started. I was wondering why my supervisor was so kiasu. Knowing peanuts about photovoltaic and kinda disoriented after coming back to singapore from germany like a few days ago, i was totally not looking forward to the meeting. Was late for like 15 mins cos i couldnt find the entrance and took hell of a long time with security, finally i entered the meeting room. Shit. bad impression man. 1st meeting late till so jialat. My 2 supervisors were there, together with my mentor and the other fyp student who is also under the same supervisors as me. Then I reached into my bag to take out the summary of the fyp topic I am supposed to do to kinda read a bit. When I reached into my bag, the paper was gone! I have left it with dips earlier. 2^nd shit. Then I borrowed some paper. and when I want to write smthg, I realized no pen! Omg, then I thicked-skinly borrowed a pen. Then then went on and on about kenneth’s (the other fyp student) proj till I almost fell asleep. OMG I was really biting to keep awake. I think I was probably still in germany time then. Still sleeping like 4 or 5 am in the morning and waking up late morning. Then coupled with my supervisor’s thick Chinese accent which really seemed stranger than german accent initially. The other student actually read up on his project scope and really seemed to know what he was supposed to do. So zai. Shit. Spoil market le. Must work hard le. But how to? The following week, I will be flying off to Bangkok, not to “bang cork” like what mitz wrote, but to visit natt, our old sec skool fren, and of course cheap shopping and massage. Who could resist that? Then after the meeting (yes I survived without dozing off!) I was suddenly energetic, but then he gave me a book on photovoltaic devices to read.

 

The 2^nd meeting

 

He immediately asked have I finished the book plus my mentor’s phd qualifying exam report. C’mon it is only the 1^st week of skool. But he was no slack jack. My heart sank when I saw the disappointment on his face. Sigh. 2^nd meeting and such a bad impression. Am I going to get condemned for my fyp for the next 2 semesters?

 

The Lab work

 

Lab work was pretty much no fun. Learning the ropes of handling the equipment, calling up qm whenever smthg fails, which is like all the time. It felt really stressful, having to be so careful and gentle in my hand movements so as not to scratch the sample. Till today, I can never really look through the microscope properly cos when I stand, I tend not to stand still, and as my body sway I cannot see the probe needle clearly and cannot see whether is the needle moving or whether my own body is moving away. But the ultimate stress was switching on the UV lamp. The ignition sound reminds me of the gas hood used for cooking. And sometimes I have to retry for hours before the lamp could ignite. Smtimes, the ignition of the lamp drew such huge currents that the whole lab power supply tripped. And I have to call up my mentor, qm again. By then, I have this extreme fear of switching on the lamp, with my quivering hands and holding my breath each time I turn the knob, praying that it will work. I really dreaded going to lab then, the stressfulness of operating the lamp was just too much. I secretly hope that it will spoilt before it really electrocute me with those huge currents, but then I really pray such will not happen cos the repair will take at least 3mths for which I know is the end of my fyp experiments. So coupled with so many fears, I wasn’t really happy back then, with friends telling me why am I spending so much time on my fyp, esp during the holidays. But the main prob is experiments is just as fickle as can be. Today I may be spending only 3 hours on this shit, but tmr when I repeat the same thing, I may spend the whole day and get nothing out of it.

 

After a while I tried experimenting with the graphs and plotting different variations of parameters, cos I have got a huge load of data then. But in the end almost all were rejected as no trend. No use. Saddening. Smtimes it is so demoralizing that I just cried after the meetings. But who is to understand all this and y the hell an I spending weeks on useless shit?

 

So the new focus of my experiment came accuracy, at whatever cost, I was very determined to show that I really tried my best is avoiding all errors, retaking readings if they didn’t have the straight line trend I wanted. It took a great deal of time. I was on the verge of completion for the whole cycle of readings, just when the UV lamp broke. My life felt really shattered. I felt I have lost my direction suddenly. 3 months without lamp? That is impossible. I would have graduated then. Even if it were repaired, I can never continue the same cycle of readings cos the lamp has changed. To redo the whole cycle is smthg that can never be accomplished

 

Lost and deeply saddened at the loss of the UV lamp, like the death of smthg so close and impt, I wandered aimlessly for the 1^st mth of 2007, doing nothing for fyp, still trying to cope with the loss. I didn’t feel like starting on my report, cos those results at hand weren’t those I wanted to report. I hate it, but I know I have to live with it. I skipped the weekly meeting because I had nothing to report and I didn’t want boss to ask about my thesis report because I haven’t started. Somehow, I was just taking this chance to really enjoy myself. With a one day week, coming to skool for god knows what reason, crashing dips’ socio lecture, it was then I felt totally useless doing nothing and yet not wanting to start my report. So it was then that I decided to take up tuition, to earn some money in my spare time, instead of keep taking money from the house for my increasing expenditure. It was a P6 assignment, twice a week near Tampines JC. After initial hesitation of twice a week, and how am I going to cope with lab + tuition when the lamp comes back, I decided to take up the offer.

 

And after some time the lab really came back, and I was effed for not turning up for regular meetings. So it is back to lab again, I thought I could continue my stuff, but the results of the new lamp can never be compared to the old one because the intensity of the lamp was so much stronger. Despite attempts to lower the intensity to that of the old lamp, the results are not comparable cos the spectrum of the new lamp itself is different from the old one. So all this anticipation of the new lamp and experiments to improve my old results is just wishful thinking.

 

But things took a turn for the better. A batch of samples with totally new material which is 10x better than that I have worked on was fabricated ( thanks to qm and dy who toiled weeks to spin coat layer by layer and all the processing which I know shit about.) Happily, we went to test this new sample, but with really strange response that we dunno how to handle or measure. So after weeks of effing by boss, we finally got the right method and direction.

 

In the midst of all this new experiments, I was rushing my final thesis and presentation as well, time pressure really brings about efficiency. Haha. That’s so me. Little miss procrastinator. Oh the day before my presentation, my boss actually praised mi for my thesis, which made mi over the moon and I cant stop smiling to myself during lunchtime. People muz have thot I m mad. But then again, in subsequent meeting, he corrected my thesis and pointed out errors everywhere which pulled me from the happy moon back down to earth.

 

The Presentation

 

The presentation sux. I really did tried my best to present, trying to put minimal words but that *** attacked almost every sentence in the first few slides. C’mon it is only the introduction part, cant u just take a back seat and listen to me for once? Haha..of course I didn’t say that. But he asked mi so many questions and will keep asking till I cannot give a satisfactory answer and my patience was running low. I zoned out momentarily and asked for the question to be repeated. But I was really touched that boss helped mi a lot when I got stuck in the questions, and asked mi to move on to speak so as not to drag the time. According to dy who sat through my presentation, it took 40 min to clear the 1^st 14 slides, which is not even halfway through. But after a while, the *** asked mi to speed up and of course I am damn happy to go at full speed, it was the *** who dragged the time so long initially with the endless questions, how ironic.

 

After the presentation, I just sat down and chill my brain. Overworked. Haha. But seein Kenneth’s presentation which was directly after mine, I do feel that *** was really being even more harsh on him, then I actually felt better (that’s mean I know, but it is human nature, or my nature) and luckier perharps.

 

Now

Now what’s left in the last leg is to complete my thesis on this new material, this new chapter I am going to add. And after that I am off! I think I will really miss imre. I spent much more time there than in school for the past 2 semesters.

I havent been updating much these days. But with a little more free time at hand, i think i should.

 

Just finished my first and last paper, CN4223. Microelectronics thin film. Crazy paper. so much to write. 1st Question was 50 marks, 2nd question was 25marks, 3rd was also 25 marks. Wah lao, write the 50m question till my brain juice dried up, then no more juice for qn 2 and 3. Opened book,  but towards the end also no time to even open the book! It is like the answer is shouting from the book, "Write mi down, you dummy." but i just didnt have the time to really read the question and analyse the problem. Stupid, silly.But i m glad that it is over.

 

School's over. Going back to do some last minute work for my thesis. Been giving myself a break this weekend, cos my left my thick stack of readings in skool. wahaha..good excuse.

 

Been studying in skool for the past week, even though i hate it cos my understanding seemed to be progressing nowhere, but i think i ll kinda miss the place cos i m gg to leave this place so so soon! really regret not taking photos with the gals on the last day of skool.

 

So to my goodie frens, who still wans to take photo in skool please tell mi. Cos if i just go and take pics of it w/o anyone then meaningless le. Frens give the meaning in life. I know i have been seriously neglecting practically all my frens, keep promising that i ll catch up with them, in dec i said i would, now i said i would, but how much have i done? I have made a mess of my life, give mi time, i promise i ll make it up this time and make effort to keep together so that we dont drift apart even after we all move on to our working lives.