When Silence Is No Longer Golden

Hi readers! Not a very long hiatus between posts this time round, eh? Count yourselves lucky, because I decided to update my blog just to keep a journal of something that happened last week. Just to give you a background information, I flew to Tianjin, China last Wednesday and just returned today.  The plan was for my family (and I) to attend my elder brother's graduation ceremony but because we bought our tickets before the graduation date is confirmed, it turned out that the graduation would be on Sunday and we already purchased our return tickets on Saturday. Despite the trip being extremely exhausting, things did not go as planned, and we ended up not doing what we intended to do for the trip (attending the graduation) it was nevertheless a fulfilling one for me.

Hi readers! As you might have read in my previous post , I was offered an internship position in Google Sydney this summer (or winter, down here). And today is my first day at work! I'm sure all of you who read this blog must be waiting for this post! So here it is! Before I start on my story about Google, let me start with my first impressions of Australia and its people. To give you some background, I have never been to a "Western" country my whole life, so it was really quite an experience when I first arrived there. I already had some expectations of how Australians would be (the usual "Western" stereotypes: very cheerful, friendly, talks a lot, etc..). And they really are; I was picked up by the AIESEC people in the Kingsford Smith airport. They were just like those stereotypes I just mentioned lol. Not that it is a bad thing, but I was really tired from the flight, so I was not ready to speak a less-Singlish English and to reciprocate their eagerness to...

Hi readers! It feel so surreal to be finally back to Singapore and my busyness as an NUS student. Did I really go to China for an exchange last semester? Just slightly more than 2 months ago I was still there? Doesn't feel like it at all, especially when you are 5 km deep within seas of responsibilities and school work. Just to update you guys, I am enrolled in Facebook Open Academy programme through my university this semester. It is basically a programme where students work on an open-source projects and Facebook becomes the intermediary between the project owners/IC and the universities. It took quite a lot of my time as the demand from my university is quite high regarding this, and I have been under-delivering results. Also, I become a laboratory teaching assistant for Data Structures and Algorithm I course in NUS, which takes much more time than I expected. However, for the money (which I need desperately) I shall persevere! Now, I am 2 paragraphs in and not a ment...

In merely a couple of days or so, another year is going to end soon. This would be the second time I am spending my new year overseas; the first one being the first year I was in Singapore - 2008. Damn I still remember how it was... We were playing some group game in the hostel and the game ended with a countdown to 2009. That was friggin 7 years ago. Damn, how time flies! And now I am most probably going to spend it playing another group game or singing at a KTV with a bunch of people from that Buddhist society. In case you guys are wondering why I don't go to some other place to watch fireworks, because I heard there is no fireworks during new year in China. (Say whaat?) I just realized (before writing this post) that this blog, despite already spending 2 new years, only contains one "obligatory new year post". I am not sure what happened to me during that year (or rather, this year!), but from reading the last post before the new year , apparently I was occupied w...

Hi readers! Another very long hiatus, uh? Sorry about that, I am trying to make myself more active in the various activities I participated in. I would have thought I have not blogged for the whole semester if I did not actually check my last post (well, at least it was not THAT bad!). That article must have hit home so hard that I was compelled to post it right then. Anyway, just to keep you all readers (if any) updated, I got an internal offer from NUS for an exchange to Tsinghua University, China , is currently interning (though it feels more like 'working') at Optimai for the summer. Do I miss anything? Those are the important ones anyway. So why do I decide to update this blog now? Well... I have wanted to update my blog since forever, but I just haven't got the time to do so yet. I guess my effort to make myself more active is quite successful, then? Haha. Actually, it was partly because I am currently hosting (more like squatting) a friend in my room for the summe...

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 t...