Quote of the Week

Quote from Fr Alban's sermon today, "....many temptations promise life, only to trade with death; but frail as we are, it's difficult for us to distinguish the two."

What's next?

I have not submitted my dissertation. I am still waiting for my supervisor to go through it and give his final "blessings" to print.

1 tonne to be shipped home, 2 tonnes to be left here, 0.5 tonne to the recycling bin and 3 tonnes of souvenirs to go back with me. Total 6.5tonnes of nonsense.

In the mean time, I have started packing without knowing when to leave. Things do accumulate over the year. I never knew I had so many things until I started packing. I threw lots of stuff too. Tonnes of course notes there!

I have not bought my flight ticket because I am still weighing several options post-Cambridge. As this will lead me to different things in life, I would certainly need to take some time to ponder and pray over it. I hope I could receive a feedback on one of the options by next week. I will be more decided then.

Internet surfing - only when you need to

I do not promote softwares but I must talk about this one. The new Google Desktop (GD) is really cool. It looks like a Windows Vista add-on but I would rather give this credit to Apple (am sure you'd know why).

Before I am asked the question: "Are you checking on my blog every minute? I just wrote that article and you have commented in less than 20 minutes!", I would like to clarify that I don't. It's just that I have found a more effective way of keeping track the list of cool blogs that I go to through the RSS feed offered by GD. Living in the UK, I definitely find the real time weather forecast an extremely useful tool.

You can customise the gadgets according to taste. There are live feed on NASA's satellites, real time news updates from BBC, CNN, etc. And am sure my Muslim and Taoist friends would find the position of the moon gadget, a useful tool, especially when it comes to festivals.

Sounds like a marketing pitch but GD has altered the way I surf and saved me lots of time! Now I only surf when I need to. I would certainly recommend this to everyone! It's already been out since June, so some or most of you may already have this in your PC/laptops. If you don't, it's not too late.

O wait, der_pacemaker and Raymond just updated their blogs....see ya!

Goodbye to the Roes

Farewell dinner for the Roes

It's coming. Everyone's saying goodbye to each other and I just hate it. I hate saying goodbyes. But it must come somehow, someday. As far as I know, four of my classmates have already left Cambridge and yesterday I cooked Chris and Melissa a Malaysian Hainanese Chicken Rice (farewell) dinner before their turn to leave (on Thursday).

Hainanese Chicken Rice; de-boned to make it easier for the Mat Sallehs to eat (Mat Salleh = Caucasian; a term I have already thought the Roes)

Then again, I am equally excited because both of them have decided to visit Malaysia in September, when I am back. Yay! If everything goes as plan, Owen too would be coming and it'd be really great to see them in Malaysia as I get to show them around KL and other parts of Malaysia!

I must attest I have taken alot of things for granted living in Malaysia. It's easy if you only need to tell the way to travel by bus from KL to Penang, but what about travelling from KL to say, Pulau Tioman? It's quite different living in the country and travelling there as a tourist. There were many things I didn't know their significance too. Every Malaysian is familiar with the Petronas Twin Towers and the Sultan Abdul Samad building, but it's a different thing altogether if you were asked, "Why did the British architect who designed the Sultan Abdul Samad Building ended up with an Islamic design when it was done in the neo-colonial period?" I have not (yet) been asked that question yet but these are the type of questions (inspired by The Star recently) that would make me google to find the answers.

High Standard of English in Cambridge

Yesterday's papers reported about the weak grasp of English from the undergrads in Imperial College. One of the tutors highlighted some of the blunders:

"...occcurs, ocour, occurence, occuring, occured and occures - all used in essays that were checked before being handed in."

"..herd instead of heard, fourth instead of forth, been instead of bean,"

"and many of the writers were 'hopeless at punctuation'. "

I thought to myself, "No, I won't make that kinda mistake."

Feeling confident was one thing but being pointed out that I was over-confident was another.

This is what happened...

I took my dissertation to be proofread by one of the English tutors in my College, Dr S, since I had some time to kill while waiting for my supervisor to come back from his long vacation. Besides, it will only benefit me by getting a second opinion for my report.

Dr S wrote me an email yesterday and told she has received my printed draft and may take some time to proofread the whole report. She added that it was a smooth read overall. (I can't believe she finished reading 15,000 words within two hours!!! That's amazing!)

This afternoon, I received half the report fully marked by Dr S. I was really impressed by her speed of marking. She probably thought I needed it done quickly. But whatever it is, I am sure she did not do it in haste just by looking at the level of marking on the papers! Each page of the A4 that the report was printed on were scribbled with corrections and suggestions. It turned out like an art actually. Hahaha!

"Don't be nice, Dr S. Be very strict in your marking and tell me if it's bad. I want to learn and improve."

Initially I felt horrible upon learning that my English was awful. My swollen confidence has obviously burst this time! But I was nevertheless satisfied and in fact, very happy to know the weaknesses and errors that have passed me for ages. Dr S managed to point them out today and I am so thankful for that. None on spelling errors, but many on punctuations, sentence structuring and articulation.

I pondered a while after reading the marked report, "My God...the standard of English in Cambridge is so high!" The almost impeccable IELTS score last year must have only qualified me to the kindergartens if Dr S's standards applied. Now I wish I have another year in Cambridge to "graduate" to Dr S's level of English, then I'd be more confident writing for next year's National Essay competition.