New Semester, New Vision

Holy mother of cow!! I am so sorry for abandoning this blog (again) for like the entire summer! I did not know that maintaining a blog is not as easy as it seems. Anyway, just to ensure that we are on the same page, I re-read the last couple of posts I posted in the blog (which made me realize that I have not posted anything for the whole duration of the summer!). So, just to give a closure to the questions on the previous posts, I ended up working in Indonesia, but not in Surya University, but Universitas Siswa Bangsa Internasional (USBI here onwards) instead. It is actually the same professor, but he told me that the vacancies in Surya has already been filled in so he will accommodate us there, where he is the dean of one of the faculties there! The pay was really low, though... So I was there more for the experience than the money. Unfortunately, there was a turn of event that made the professor the acting RECTOR! Obviously, being an acting rector, dean, and supervisor for us at the same time, not to mention planning new courses for the coming semester, will make him unavailable almost all the time (it was ALL the time actually. He was just kind enough to give us a little bit of his time to guide us). To keep it short, it was a rather disappointing, but quite an eye-opening experience. 

Other than having an internship, I also went to Malaysia and Thailand for the summer. I went to Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Johor Bahru (JB) with my family sometime in June, and then to KL, Penang, Hat Yai, and finally, Krabi with friends just last week. Comparing to my other holidays, this is indeed the most eventful break.

Just saying, I actually planned to write a post regarding my Thailand trip in this blog, but because of some trouble in the process of me checking in to my new room in NUS, the trip became a little stale in my mind, and I lost interest in posting about it. I may post about it though, if I happen to reminisce my photos on Facebook, and suddenly feel like posting. No promises, though.

Preview of my Thailand trip!
Not a picture of me, in case you are wondering.

Anyway, I am not sure if I have told you readers that I took a summer module called Orbital, where Freshmen can spend the summer building something, preferably a web app, inferring from the workshops they provide to guide the students. Actually it is not really important, since I ended up withdrawing from the course due to the workload of the internship =(. This is just a note to self, that I may have been too soft on myself.

Enough of updates. Now to the point I am posting this. I am not satisfied with what I have achieved last year, with my first year of university life. Let us summarize what I have achieved last year, based on the targets I set. NOTHING! I did not go for most opportunity available (I lost track sometime in the semester, but I believe I missed a bunch of opportunities). I hardly speak to girls (the extreme boy:girl ratio in my faculty does not help either), much less speak Chinese. I kept skipping Sunday service. I do not get any buffer. I was not in Singapore over the summer. I did not join any CCA officially, despite being a steady audience of NUS Hackers' talks. I believe I did not even try to become more spontaneous. I think I seriously need to write these somewhere more accessible, like my phone or something. Or to take drastic (and more YOLO) measure, write them on a paper and stick it on my room's wall! Yeah, I think I gonna do that once I finish this post.

Yeah, shortly, I failed big time in fulfilling my new year's resolution. Luckily, university academic year starts in the middle of the solar year, so I have a good check point to see if I have done anything to fulfil those resolution I made on 1/1. Now, other than those resolutions, my plan for the coming semester is to SERIOUSLY take a CCA where I WILL actually interact with people (and hopefully girls too, fingers crossed). NUS Buddhist Society comes to mind, but I remember the initial reason why did I not end up joining them; it's because their weekly meeting clashes with NUS Hackers'! Last year, I prioritized the Hackers' free pizza. Those damn pizza. They were nice and free, of course, which is awesome, but I must admit that I did not gain much from it. I wonder how my situation would be if I chose to go for Buddhist Society's meetings instead.... There are other alternatives, of course. It just has not crossed my mind yet.

I guess, that is all for now. Now if you please, I want to write my 7 resolutions on post-its and stick them all over my room's noticeboard.

And of course, good luck in your life's endeavours!