Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Winner of NaNoWriMo!



This is the one moment I had been waiting for a whole month! 50k mark is passed. About 133 pages of Novel is done, and it is halfway through.

I'm quite lucky for being able to write it without exam pressure as I had only Japanese 1 exam, and I planned to S/U it. So there was a lot of free days in which I just devoted the days into the novel.

There was three periods in which I stopped for a few days through. The latest being because I became a Kapiya for Bante Kumara in Poh Ming Tse temple for 2 days and then join in his Adult Dharma Course Lite for 2 days.

It was a worthwhile use of my time, both at the ADC Lite and the novel writing. And today I also did a very brave thing. I felt so relieved and happy after doing it.

Anyway, the important thing to learn here is that mindfulness, meditation can be applied in daily life no matter what you are doing. And I am not writing consistently anymore as NaNoWriMo demands words over quality, and not to delete anything you wrote. Ah, well, there are somethings in life you cannot finish sharing. Here I shall finish the novel up by next semester, and then let it go, not going to write a sequel to it. I got to live my life now instead of 3 years ago! How much has I matured, yet still so immature. Haha.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Sheldon has a girlfriend

Haha, the lastest episode of the Big Bang theory, The Flaming Spittoon Acquisition was the best one so far in the episode.

Thanks to that, I understand the psychology of a girl's mind more and really amazed by the ability of anyone, regardless of geek or nerd level, to have a girlfriend.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

NanoWriMo

Hey guys and gals,

It seems much easier to write on a blog than to write a novel. 50k words in a month! Now November's more than half finished and I am still only on the 20k mark, less than a quarter of the novel in chapters and getting tired of rushing so much, writing stuffs that I'm not sure anybody would read.

Maybe it's better to write here, not much people read this, but at least it's free and people don't mind reading this.

Ah, anyway my novel would be about My NUS Experience, Semester 1, 2008. I wanted to write down this to let those who are interested in coming into NUS (or Singapore to a certain extend) to know what NUS life is like. This can even be used for people to know what University life is like. It is a varsity novel, an autobiography written in my way. Sometimes I think I may had been too detailed in it. Using my gmail, blog, and facebook, I am reconstructing my past, bringing me back to 3+ years ago. It was not easy seeing all my mistakes and blunders and arrogant self back then.

Especially with this blog that is full of spelling mistakes. And I am not sure if anyone would bother to read this, this mundane boring life. Ok I'll do my best to put in my quirkiness inside it, however, there is a limit to how detailed I can make my novel to be without wasting too much words on it.

20k now and school has not yet started! Amazing! These past few weeks has been full of obstacles to writing:
Zen Conference
Cyberarts website
Now I only got Jap 1 to study for, that's good.
SPS Congress, IRCC presentation... etc...
Now after 24th, I'm going to be a Kapiya, so 2 more days gone.... ahhh. so many stuffs to do...

Nope, now I feel very very free. Much more so than previous semesters, as I am now not chasing any anime/shows/movies/games/NUSBS (ok, just a little on this) to catch up with and just mainly concentrating on writing. I am amazed by how much I can just write here and when I need to write the hard parts of my novel, I can procrastinate a lot.

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Typicals of Semester 7 life

This is yet another post about updates on my life. I think that I had better post this up for the future me to be able to recall what it was like to live in NUS back in Semester 7. I am currently writing my NUS Experience, Semester 1, 2008. It will be a novel, kind of a memoir. And in order to write it, I had to refer to my past emails, this blog, calendars, pictures on facebook, diary, and my memory.

Looking back at my previous posts, I did wrote a lot during semester 1, making it easy for me to be able to reconstruct my experience back then. So realizing that recently I had not had a lot of posts for the year 2011, I do think that I had better record down some parts of my current life for easier reference in the future.

Btw, looking back at my old posts, I detected a lot of spelling errors. It seems that my English wasn't so well. A deserving B- I got indeed for my English module.

Now, let's see, we'll start from Monday. 8-10am, I had Japanese tutorial A, I missed a lot of the tutorials and really can't catch up anymore. 10am-12pm I was supposed to have group meeting in SPS too, mentoring Rong En's group. Then 2-6pm is the Singapore Film module. After 6pm, it is MDC time! I keep on asking people from SPS to come with me. I thought that having no night classes on Monday and more interested Buddhist in SPS is going to make a difference. But it seems that I had to continue being the lonely figure going for MDC then. Wonderful. Then they bring me back to Utown, where the dinner which was until 9pm (now 10pm), was skipped, and I had another meal to treat someone else. It is hard to keep track of how many meals you had already. So far I had treated: Cai Yu, Shan Shan, Barry, Chin Xia, Si Hao, Minh, Tzyh Haur, Hung, Yun Zhi, Chang Jian, my parents, NUSBS people, and various other people.

Tuesday, morning breakfast are from 7-10am. I missed a lot of these by now. So I'm taking 2 breakfasts when I could wake up in time for it. There is an even week tutorial of Singapore Film at 12pm-2pm, I was almost always late for this, except for today, when I had to present too! 4-6pm is the Japanese Class. So during the middle 2 hour, I had gone back to SPS to eat at the Science Canteen, stayed at the Central Library to read comic, or to catch up on sleep. 6pm onwards, there used to be nothing except for Door to Tibetan Buddhism every 2 weeks. However, after recess week, I got myself involved in the Random Walks in Science, so I as the Group Coordinator feels a bit more responsibility to attend the Tuesday nights talks and seminars from 7-8 or 9pm. However, I had previously signed up and paid for a Tai Chi class from 6:30-8pm, 6 sessions for $55. Therefore I do feel wasted if I do not go for the Tai Chi classes. Which ultimately was too basic for me anyway, the others in the classes are really beginners level and I am tired of having to wait for them to catch up. I was the only undergraduate there too. Just now I had my last class and I am not signing up for another session again. Just nicely that this would be Random Walks in Science's last Tuesday activity too, taking a break for the exams. And amongst all these, 3 weeks of these features NUS Interfaith Group giving talks from Christianity, Taoism, and Hinduism. The rest of the sessions got cancelled and thereafter I was kinda glad that I had less competition for Tuesday nights.

Wednesday morning, 8-10am, Japanese Tutorial B. This is the one I had rescheduled just to make sure I can make it for a meeting for SPS mentoring. Then 10:30am I have a meeting with Dr. Kuldip Singh, my FYP supervisor. We usually meet for half an hour to one hour, and I am still making very little progress on this, due to not doing much work on my part mostly. Man, if I want a good record, I do better behave myself. 2-4pm is Wednesday IS. There was quite a few weeks that there wasn't an IS going on for the year 1 SPS students, for they had experiments to do. My IS then contains: Chammika, the staff, John, me and Pang Long, the mentors, Er Ning, Pei Hwa, Kripa, Yithing, and Xipias as the students. No physics students in the module of Atoms to Molecules, so most of the time, my IS is quiet, with a lot of prodding before they would talk. Chammika had to take lots of control because there is a structured syllabus to cover, and the mentor's role are very very very limited. Sometimes, we don't need to talk for the whole IS. After 4pm, there is the Meditation Course from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Still hard to believe that I am the only one going from SPS. Maybe it is determined that I will not have a truly good spiritual friend from SPS who is also an avid Buddhist? Haiz... Now that the meditation course had finished, there is now a writing course by Jay Bernard 5-7pm, teaching us how to make poetry. It was she who introduced me to NaNoWriMo, moving me to write the novel I am writing now in a month. That is sooooo coooL! I must thank her later on today.

Then on Thursday, there an SPS meeting with Quang's group from 8-10am. After that, I come back to Utown and have the Cyberarts Class from 2-6pm. After the class, I go for Exploring Buddhism from 6:30pm-8pm. Met Kaellyn there too, who was doing research on Buddhism. This time around, the people attending it varies. A lot. This coming week, there will be a presentation on 100 years star ship. Amazing topic to attend by the Random Walks in Science too!

Friday, morning 10-11am Japanese tutorial C. I was getting used to memorizing the script 15 minutes before class. The rest of the day is free. I usually waste this day way until the fortnightly Dharma Circle, and sometimes I joined in the new MC's meeting, disrupting it a lot. So I do not wish to join in anymore of their meetings. Next up are the weekends.

My weekends are so varied. I think it is from the London experience, that I went for SPS NOC camp with Hannah once, and then gone to help Bro. Piya move the Minding Centre to a cheaper place with Katie, and also helped out NUSBS 33rd MC retreat, joining in a Meditation group that is super good and conducive, joined in Tzu Ching's activity, FGS Musical Night, IRCC, SBYM, Buddhist Youth Leaders Network, Fo Guang Shan Youth Dharma Camp, sleeping early, going to my uncle's home to visit my grandparents who were there at that time, visiting my fellow residential faculty's home or just spending most of the time at SPS, doing various stuffs. Stuffs that I usually do. Homework, dramas, socializing, missing someone... etc...

So that's about it. Upcoming is SPS Congress. Looking forward to the end of this semester and the beginning of my new life as an author. And I'm applying to MIT too. And Utown is really getting to be really nice! I'm loving it, despite it being so expensive. Look for more information about weekly and daily differences in facebook!