Why I love anime and manga

Wooo!!!

I finished an entire series of anime in a weekend!

One of the best animes I have seen in a while!!!

Its called Attack on Titan!

It has fantastic fight sequences and quite an intriguing plot!!! I just wished I could have not peek at the plot before watching haha :P

I pretty much spent my entire teenagehood reading manga and sometimes anime. I am a dreamer and the world that the characters in the manga live in are all so full of exciting adventures that I wish I was in. Everytime I finish reading a series, it would take a while for me to pull myself out of the manga world and get back into reality. Yupz thats how much of a dreamer I am.

With the ending of my favourite mangas(bleach and naruto) looming, it seems that I am slowly leaving this world behind. But everytime I discover a new excellent manga, all the excitement come rushing back to me!

Nowadays, most people just read online but I remember the days when me and my best friend in Secondary school would go to the bookstore weekly to check for the newly published mangas and I would be so happy when the newest book come out! Those were the days.....

woes...

The similarity with my fyp and my internship at keppel is that I am doing things which I don't know and lack the fundamental concepts to learn about, and I can't seem to engage my superiors in a useful discussion to learn more as I seem to be better at taking orders from them. Discussions with peers like during projects are so much easier as everyone seems to be more or less on the same level. hmmmm........

Progress or not...

Trying to keep a steady progress in all your projects is quite tiresome for me especially since I am such an unfocused person. Maybe I will keep a progress log here to keep track of what I have been doing weekly :)
I stumbled on this idea when I read this article http://www.sodaware.net/blog/2005/11/keeping-a-progress-log-part-ii/

Basically this guy separates his goals into 7 categories - Financial, Work (or Study for me), Fun, Health, Relationships, Contributions, Personal. He also uses this b-Alert system to focus his life and gives himself scores daily. b-Alert stands for blueprint (basically a to-do list), Action, Learning, Exercise, Relaxing, Thinking. I kind of get that he wants to have a life that wants to do a lot of things (which is what I am doing) and to do them well (which is what I am not doing).

First I shall list out the important goals currently.
1) FYP - I just had a major  complete change of topic, so its kind of restarting every single thing.
2) Other engineering modules - I am not really enthusiastic about them but I am up to date thanks to group mates
3) NUS Skating Club - I go every wed. But in terms of skills and goals that is to teach, slalom and urban, I am definitely not reaching them.
4) Tembusu Bladers - I have a session every thursday but lesser people are going each week and I do not really think of new ways to promote it and tell a lot of people about it.
5) Tea drinking club - I held a welcome tea which had like 40 people attending but nobody wants to co-organize. I had a subsequent session where I had a few friends to come.
- the lack of people makes it feel if it is worth continuing
6) Tstudios - I design one poster and went to meetings. I should be designing more...
7) Tembusu Ukulele Beats - We had 2 performance but I feel like the general enthusiasm is lessening as we have been skipping sessions for 2 weeks.
8) TYE 1: Tkampung and Globetrekkers: I got photos from tkampung and read some storytelling skills and discussed with Allison.
9) TYE 2: Reviewing Tkampung: met up with the crew and found out more about their experience.
10) TYE 3: Consulting with social enterprise: in the process of looking for a social enterprise.
11) Babirusa: They had a lot of hanging out but I was always busy or sleepy.
12) BAF: Didn't hangout much recently as everyone is busy with our own lives.
13) Resident Assistant: wanted to hangout a lot with the people and foster a homely experience in ORA but I have also been neglecting it a lot.
14) Gymming and Swimming - NIL

So it seems like I am really trying to do too much without really doing anything at all. I'm more like hobo-ing around. With my tendency to just muck around, I need more time to do a single stuff or I can be more focused! Maybe I should drop some of the things that I have less of a connection to or are less needed... I shall just spend the weekend sitting on these thoughts...

1 month on in my final year

Reality really sucks.

These days I am always stuck in my room trying to figure out the academic papers, equations, codes, programs for my FYP which is horrible....I feel like a headless chicken running around trying to find my head.

There are things in my 4 years in NUS that I feel I have done right and things that I have not.

Things that I am happy that I have done are joining publication in year 1 and skating club Exco in year 2, applying for Tembusu in year 2, going on exchange. The experiences and friends I made are the best I had in my life.

Things that I have regretted doing is interning at Keppel and my FYP and not participating in more clubs and societies in my first 2 years. But it is through doing these shit work that I found out about the things I hate and can't do.

When you are always succeeding, you are alright with doing the thing, but when you first fail at it, it is at the moment when you will realize it is your passion as it decides whether you will carry on plowing on and trying again or just feel like quitting. I chose to do engineering because I was just good at math and science, not because I have a genuine love for it. Now it seems as if I am hitting the difficult part of engineering course and I am coming to hate it a lot, especially the research part.

No research job for me I guess. (plz just let me survive this final year)

A NEW BEGINNING

I truly believe that in life we face new journeys, new adventures.

In the past 6 months, I was a traveller moving through places that I thought that I would only see in my dreams and is feeling like a dream right now. I was observing alot of things in the foreign land that I was in but not exactly doing anything purposeful on exchange.

Today I am living in Tembusu again. Its not the same though, I am now a third year Tembusu student, a fourth year Mechanical Engineering student and ORA house resident assistant.

In my first year in Tembusu, I was also NUS Skating Club vice president, so I couldn't really commit to planning and doing too much stuff in Tembusu. In my second year here for a semester, I was sort of floating around alot as I missed the orientation and didnt know too much of the juniors. I realised that sometimes responsibility and commitment really brings out the best in me. Hence that is why I decided to become a resident assistant.

Through this appointment, I hope to be able to commit more of my time in my final year to tembusu and to my studies (only 0.05 more to a second upper ) so that I will graduate with a BANG! Make more friends and help them achieve their dreams. Have lotsa fun and laughter, and maybe I can find some love too <3

This academic year I want to be focus and finish my work as efficiently as possible so that I can do well academically as well as develop holistically. Skating is something I always would want to work on to continuously improve and fitness too of course (Stanchart half marathon here I come!)

Last of all, in the little time that I spend with my family, I wish for the happiest moments to be present.

AY13/14 Let's go!!!!

The End? or the Start of a New Beginning?

This is the final post of this blog. I have come a long way since I started this blog in December. Finally I have finished my exchange journey and boy it was definitely the greatest experience of my life!

Living in a different country, with different weather conditions, with people of very different culture and more importantly so far away from home and my family and friends.(Kudos to the technology that make it possible for us to stay connected even though we are 15000 kilometres away)

You get to see how people in another part of the world live their lives in a different way, for example without the use of smartphones but learning to speak to each other in a conventional manner. You get to experience cooking on a daily basis and buying groceries and living cheaply by looking for deals, house brand goods while at the same time trying to live to the best you can with the money and time you have. You feel joy, loneliness, excitement, fear, love and sadness in a foreign land which you learn to call home for these 5 months.

When we traveled around Europe, you meet many people travelling around the world too and share stories of fascinating adventures. You also meet locals who you probably have to use sign language to talk to but you can feel that they are very warm and welcoming of your presence in their country and want to let you experience the things that they are proud of in their country. (sometimes hostile unfortunately but rarely). You see so much history and the remains of people of the past and try to imagine how human civilization have progressed through the millenniums into the present. You compare the difference between your country and the ones you are visiting and realize that even though your country has a lot of things to improve, it is actually pretty good compared to most countries.

The greatest thing that I take away from this journey is not the pictures that I take or the amazing scenery that I got to see with my eyes but an introspective into the person that I am or that I thought I was. Sometimes you feel that being in a different environment will change you, for example I thought I would take more to drinking or enjoying the nightclubs more than in Singapore where it is so expensive, but I realize overseas where it is so much cheaper that I still don't. These kind of insights might be trivial but together they form the person that you are and gives you a clearer identity of yourself so that you will become more self-confident in the future.

As I look out of my window into the shimmering horizon of the setting sun on my flight back to Singapore, I feel a sense of satisfaction of having embarked and completed this journey. Well it's time to go home. A new journey awaits in the next chapter of my life!

Homebound!

Poland Beauties

For this last leg of my journey in Europe, we ended up in Poland because it was cheap to fly from its airport back to London. We travelled 3 cities from Wroclaw to Krakow to Warsaw.

First in Wroclaw (pronounced vratvirst), it was not a major city but was described as a hidden gem of Poland. It had many churches and cathedral that shows the strong catholic influences in Poland. Another attraction that was really nice was the panorama of raclawice battle which is a picture depicting this battle that went 360 degrees around the viewing gallery.

Lecture hall of Wroclaw University

Wroclaw University

St John Baptist Cathedral

A small section of the panorama

The building that house the panorama

Lighted cathedral at night!

Next came Krakow which was a place with lots to do! The city itself is very beautiful as it was the royal capital of Poland before it was shifted to Warsaw. Most of the buildings were original as they were not damaged much during WWII. The most famous sightseeing attractions are Auschwitz concentration camp and the Wieliczka Salt Mines. Lesser known attractions like the idealized Communist Town Nowa Huta and the Jewish Quarters are also equally interesting to visit for a view of how people lived in the past.

A very rainy day in Krakow!

The Wawel Castle with all the Chapels built from different eras.

My favourite Polish restaurant with good cheap food and ambience

Into the Wieliczka Salt Mines

Dragon sighted at Wawel Castle!

In Nowa Huta is this modern church built by Pope John Paul II before his papacy.

Car from communist era

Communist town neighbourhood

A tank that has been through alot!

Last but not least we have Warsaw which is the current capital of Poland. Legend has it that King Sigismund was playing around with alchemy and burnt his palace in Krakow down. Thus he needed to look for a new residence and Warsaw he chosed! There are many faces of Warsaw; a metropolitan city with high rise buildings, a rebuilt historical old town, etc.

The city skyline!

King Sigismund sitting on top of the monument. 

One very special eating place is the Bar mlecky or milk bar and everything is in Polish and the people there don't speak english much.

Sorry for this extremely long post....stay tune for the final post (reflections)!!!!