October Relief

The Exams are over!!!... Well... till February that is. I used to think that Mid-Year and Final Year exams in school was a big doodie but this takes the cake man... Exams every 3 months is no fun. This term's Medical Physiology paper in particular was extremely not fun man... The Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) alone were enough to make you want to blow your brains out in the exam hall. We had 70 MCQs to answer in addition to 3 short answer questions (Don't be fooled!!! It's ESSAY Questions!!!). What's infuriating about the damn MCQs was that there were like 4 or 5 ways to answer the questions and we were given a different set of instructions every few questions. Check out some of the instructions from a past year paper:

TYPE 1
Each of the following sentences consists of two main parts; a statement and a reason for that statement. Mark the letter:
A. If the statement and the proposed reason are both true and the proposed reason is a correct explanation of the statement.
B. If the statement and the proposed reason are both true but the reason is not a correct explanation of the statement.
C. If the statement is true but the proposed reason is false.
D. If the statement is false but the proposed reason is an accepted fact or principle.
E. If the statement and the proposed reason are both false.

TYPE 2
The following paired statements describe two entities which are to be compared in a quantitative sense. Mark the letter:
A. If (1) is greater than (2).
B. If (2) is greater than (1).
C. If the two are equal or very nearly equal.

TYPE 3
Each of the following pairs of phrases describes conditions or quantities which may or may not be related. Mark the letter:
A. If increase in the first is accompanied by increase in the second, or
A. If decrease in the first is accompanied by decrease in the second.
B. If Increase in the first is accompanied by decrease in the second, or
B. If decrease in the first is accompanied by increase in the second.
C. If changes in the first are not necessarily accompanied by changes in the second.

TYPE 4
Each set of lettered headings below is followed by a list of words or phrases. For each word or phrase, insert the appropriate letter:
A. If the item is associated with (A) only.
B. If the item is associated with (B) only.
C. If the item is associated with both (A) and (B).
D. If the item is associated with neither (A) nor (B).


Imagine sitting in an exam hall racking your brains over 3 essay questions (Question1 compulsory) in section A and then coming face-to-face with these stupid instructions in section B of the paper... What's more... the stupid invigilators were oblivious to the fact that we had a 10 minute reading time and actively forbid us to start reading till 1 minute before the paper commenced. In that 1 minute, I coundn't even figure out the first set of instructions.

As I told Alissa (Hi Alissa!) on MSN (who said that she hated MP), I actually like Medical Physiology. I like learning about how each part of the body works. I just don't like being tested on how much I can remember.

I hate exams.

Anyway... here's an update on what went on in my life since my last blog entry.

About 2 weeks before the exams, my computer went *poof* on me.

ON THE DAY BEFORE MY FINAL LAB REPORT WAS DUE!!!

The irritating thing about it was that I had already finished the damn report almost a week ago. I just didn't print it out. Luckily Weng lent me his trusty Fujitsu and I managed to redo it and get it submitted with the help of Alissa. (Thank you so much for you help!!! Both of you!!!)

And you know the wonderful thing about my amazing memory is that I can hardly remember what I did 5 minutes ago (unless it's a stupid movie or cartoon then I can remember every detail from like 10 years ago.)

So I brought my (less than a year old) laptop to the IBM service centre at the Changi Business Park. That place was like a ghost town at lunchtime man... I walked past a packed al fresco cafe but it was silent... I mean I could see the people engaging in conversation and all in between mouthfuls of food but I could hardly hear noise save for the occassional laughter and raised voice. It was wierd...

Anyway, I went to the service centre and it was awesome. By that, I mean I was the only one in there. ha ha ha!

It was the first time I've been to a service centre where I was the only customer. That really upped by impression of IBM computers alot.

So there I was... the only one in there getting a number ticket for my turn. My number was called before I could get a seat. (Wow!).

I went up to the counter, sat in the nice cushy chair and told the guy my problem (My computer hangs and I can't do a reformat.) So he offers to let me try to reinstall the OS myself using their loan recovery CDs so that they don't have to charge me for service. I was then given a meeting room by myself to carry out the reinstallation.

While waiting for each CD (there were 6) to be loaded, I wandered over to their complementary beverage counter and found an instant hot drink dispenser. I helped myself to a cup of Cafe Mocha and also to a Chumpa Chupp from the big tub o' Chumpa Chupps next to the drinks machine.
I was also tempted to open the refrigerator next to the tub of Chumpa Chupps to check out their selection of cold drinks but as I mentioned earlier, I was the only one in there... so I decided to contend myself with a hot drink and a lollypop.





After 2 hours of CD jockeying (and PSP playing... Thank you Sony!), I was back at square one. So I surrendered my laptop over to the service staff for diagnostic tests. I was told that I would know the outcome only on Monday (It was a Friday).

To cut a long story short, they found several bad sectors on my hard drive and had to replace the whole damn thing. It was quite fast though. They took less than a week... in fact, they took only 3 working days. When I collected my electronic baby, I thought for a moment that they had given me a brand new machine but they had actually cleaned it up and removed all the dog hair from inbetween the keys. Heh heh. I also checked if my battery was faulty as IBM announced that there were doing a mass recall of batteries the day before but my battery was not affected. Yay! What's more, I didn't have to pay a cent as my laptop was still under warranty! Double Yay!

Because of that harrowing experience of data loss, Weng came up with the idea of getting me an external storage drive for my birthday (which was last week *hint hint*) and my friends/colleagues all chipped in to get me a Seagate 250GB External Hard Drive.

THANK YOU GUYS!!!

I seriously don't know how I'm going to fill up 250GB of data... I suppose I can backup my 50GB laptop drive 5 times. Muhahahahahaha...

I'm drunk with power. Ha ha ha ha ha!




I also got a really cool toy from Mei. It's called the Pontiki! Here's my creation. A multi-eyed all-seeing being with 2 faces. I call it the Allmighty, awe inspiring... Brainiac of Boredom (Bob).

















I also renewed by cable TV and broadband contract and got myself a FREE Digital Video Recorder (DVR) Set Top Box! Now I can record Xiaolin Showdown, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, SpongeBob and Jeff Corwin... and watch it when I'm free!!! As they say on the TV ad for the DVR box... "My TV waits for me!" Ha ha

Oh! Before I forget... something else happened. Just before one of my exam papers (Medical Physiology of all things...) my mum called and told me that the 2 idiots got into a fight (over a carrot) and that Perseus was bleeding. (Add distraction to my already frazzled memory). So I had to rush home after the paper where I found the 2 idiots jumping and running around as usual save for the fact that Perseus had blood all over his head. So I bundled him into a carrier and brought him with me to work where Lemming helped dress his wound and gave him an anti-inflammatory jab. He had a puncture wound on his forehead but he seemed oblivious to it. In fact, he spent the day at in my office harassing Fluffy while I worked. Whenever I stepped out of the office to go to the storeroom, the lab or to the recept downstairs, he tried following me and kept getting lost. He looked so pitiful that my protective instincts went into overdrive that day.

Still... he looked like a bull terrier that day cos of some swelling at his forehead. I should have taken some pictures but I forgot. Upon returning home, he immediately went back to his routine of roughhousing with Duncan and eating. Sometimes I wonder what goes through that little doggy mind of his.


Now Playing: Lemmings (PSP)

This game is a remake of the classic from Nintendo and Sega. It has virtually the same stages save for some additional, made specially for the PSP stages (which I have yet to play... Come on... Gimme a break. I bought this during my exam week.) Ok. Ok... I did play with it. Just the first few stages mind you. And I found that it is exactly the same as the versions found in the NES and MegaDrive. The difference that it is now portable, meaning I can crack my brains on the road, and that the background is animated. Sweet! Also, the widescreen of the PSP make it an ideal console to play this game.

Basically, for you non-Lemmings fans (Wow... that actually required some conscious effort to pronounce), the goal of the game is to provide a group of Lemmings safe passage over a terrain to an exit door.

Lemmings are cute (or irritating to some) little green-haired critters that have only one goal in life, which is to move continuously forward. Striving to move forward is a good trait to have in life but not for them. They'll keep moving forward till they either get to their goal or till they meet their doom via falling from a high platform, spinning razor blades, eternally trapping chasms and etc.

With each level, you are allocated different skills in which you can bestow upon some or all of the Lemmings (depends on how many of each skill is allocated per level). You can turn them into floaters (to survive falls), climbers (to scale high obstcles), diggers (to create a vertical path down), miners (to create a diagonal path down), builders (to create steps which also function as bridges) and so on and so forth. You need to bestow the skills on the Lemmings to prevent them from walking head-on to their doom, and to (hopefully) guide them towards the exit.

Depending on the level of difficulty, there is a quota of a certain number of Lemmings that you have to save per level. Some levels are easy to negotiate, whereas others can be difficult, brain wrecking, irritating and deceptively difficult yet irritatingly simple when you find the solution.

It's a puzzle game which I have loved since I first tried it on the NES. I actually wanted to get this game when it first launched but thank God I waited cos i got it on sale for SGD 40 bucks! On my birthday too! Heh heh heh. It was a birthday gift I got myself. Ha ha ha.