Slacking Sunday (or saturday...)

It's really bad, I know.

I should be studying in preparation for my exams, which is in a month's time, but yet I am on the computer for all of yesterday and a few hours today. Can't help it. Will definitely put in a little quality time with my books within the next 2 days before I head to Budapest.

But before that, let me show you a find that I had just found!
I was pottering around youtube when I stumbled across accapella groups. So, by a stroke of curiousity, I decided to youtude The King's Singers. Well, for those who don't know who they are, they are a bunch of guys who sing together but on a smaller scale than a choir. They are pretty fabulous, as fabulous as singing accapella goes, and their songs make a good lullaby. But here, the one I found, is really funny and interesting.

Check it out!! Especially the guy who can sing a soprano!



"Deconstructing Johann"

Lyrics:

J. S. Bach had a little problem.
J. S. Bach was in a fix.
J. S. Bach couldn't find an answer.
What to do?

I've written most of a rather fabulous work!
Toccata, it's in D minor, but now I'm feeling a bit of a jerk.
I can't think of what should come after it.

Now, said his wife, who was resting up after her 33rd child.
Johann, my dear, you should just go to bed.
Something always comes up.

Don't be a twit!
It's a real crisis and I'm working to a deadline.
What can I fit?
What to fit after the great toccata
Maybe it needs to be something faster
I haven't got a clue
and in a week the piece is due
I'm in a panic.
I'm stuck like glue.

Don't get your knickers in a twist, Johann,
'Those are only notes,' you've always said.
There's only twelve so use your head
How many arrangements of twelve notes can there possibly be?

That's a problem I don't want to deal with
How many permutations on C and D and E and F and G, A, B is a thing that I never heard of.
You can leave that to Arnold Schönberg
He is the person to do that twelve-tone thing

No! No!
It isn't the answer, I haven't the foggiest.
What am I gonna do?
I'm all in a panic
Aaah, no.

What can I do?
I've finished my toccata but I have no fugue

(Phone ringing)

Ah... and now I've got the fugue!

From Wiki:
Toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch") is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers.

In music, a fugue (pronounced /ˈfjuːɡ/) is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred to as "voices".

Done with it!

I'm finally done with school!!
Hooray!!

No more cryptic assignments and tough labs!
Why cryptic assignments? Honestly, if you take a look at some of the graph theory or probability and statistics questions, you would have sworn that they are greek. Not to mention that some of the notes are reworded in a way that is makes cryptology a prerequisite module to take before figuring out what they are trying to say.

Ah, I'm done with school, now for the exams!

Oh, about the exams, they are 4 hours long!! It's like even longer than the longest exam I had ever taken. Not to mention that I am so unlucky to have 2 exams on the same day, from 8 to 12, then from 2 to 6. It would be 10 hours of non-stop pain...

I fear for my sanity at the end of that day...

Let's talk about the weather

The weather is turning hot here recently.

With the coming of spring, the warmth is to be expected. However, what I did not expect was how hot this place could be!

The past week had been dreadfully like Singapore!! The temperature was as high as 32 degrees and was pretty dry. I would be sweating buckets by the time I come back from school and would have to jump into the shower or take a swig of cold beer to cool me down.

Sometimes I wonder if Singapore was the same, but then, the humidity in Singapore is much higher with the occasional wind and not to mention the obsession with fans and air-conditioning and other what-nots that we use to cool ourselves down. Here, the people don't even know the meaning of a fan. My room only has a heater and so, to get past those warm nights, I sleep with my window wide open, sans blankets. Just don't think about the bugs that come in and it would be fine...

The afternoons are the worst. The sun can be relentless and the dry heat makes one burn up faster than a toaster oven. I think the reason why I might return darker than I left would have more to do with the sun here than my escapades around France and Europe.

Luckily, right now, it is raining. A welcomed reprieve from the usual glaring evening sun in my room. Because my room faces the west, I get a generous dose of the evening sun. Mornings are great for me to sleep in, but the evenings are just too hot for me to even open my window beause the air in my room is much cooler thn the air out there. So, because of this fortunate reprieve, I am going to enjoy my first hot cup of tea since the end of winter and look out at the nice gloomy sky.

A Reason to Rejoice... For a while...

YAY!!!

FINALLY! After hours of slogging in front of the computer and bashing my head against my laptop, I am finally done with programming in C!! Well, at least for this sememster.

Argh, it is pretty official that I hate C. And when it suits me, I hate Java and all the other programming languages too. Thank God my future career doesn't revolve around it. My future is SO secure! ;-p

I'm not going into a whole diatribe about why I don't like C, but if one's knowledge of C is amatuer at best and is suddenly forced to programme in the Kernel with C, the experience would be nothing short of extreme torture.

But it is over! And I can say, there is a certain sense of acheivement when I submitted my last assignment about 10 minutes ago. Hooray!! NO MORE C for the rest of the semester!! I am SO NOT going to take any programming modules when I get back...

Anyway, I went to Lucerne yesterday. It was sort of a "get-away"-from-the-homework-that-I-had-promised-my friend-sometime-ago and-so-can't-back-out-even-though-I-had-a-deadline-to-meet thing.


Did I mention that I had gone to Lucerne previously before this? Well, that was 2 years ago and I still remembered the Swiss Lion monument, the watch shops that the tour guide herded us to to collect those gift spoons and the chapel bridge. However, because we went yesterday, which was the public holiday for Ascension Day, all the shops were closed. But no matter.That place is really a tourist district. The stuff there are all so overpriced that what I could get there, I could most probably get them in Lausanne at a cheaper price.

It was really one unlucky day for me yesterday. First, I left the house with the aim to catch the 0821 bus to the train station so that I would reach at 0830 to buy my ticket for the 0845 train. I had reached the bus terminal right on the dot, but to my chagrin, the bus actually left already. Let me briefly mention that the Swiss transport system operates on the clock. If the train leaves at 0845, it really leaves at 0845 sharp and not a minute later. Thus, imagine my surprise when the 0821 bus left without me! In short, I missed the 0845 train, which meant waiting for an hour to catch the next train to Lucerne.

Fine, I admit that I should have gone there earlier and so it did not really piss me off that much. Besides, I could browse through the bookstore at the station, so I was fine for an hour. BUT, the train ride there had seriously pissed me off. Originally a two hour straight train ride from Lausanne to Lucerne, it became a three hour train hop due to a train malfunction at a particular station. Thus, I spent 3 hours on 3 different trains, two of which I was stuck with family with noisy kids that my iPod couldn't drown out.

It was a good thing that I had decided to purchase a day pass for the swiss transport. At 54 Fr, it was pretty expensive, but still a bargain if I factor in the train ride (58Fr) and the boat ride that I took in Lucerne. Yes, I took a boat from Lucerne to one of the outlying villages, Alpnachstad. It was a furthur 1 and a half boat ride, then a furthur 30 mins ride on the cogwheel rail up the mountain there. Yes, the view was amazing on the way up, but it was a little too expensive for me. In the end, I had to borrow money from my friend just for the 36 Fr ticket to go up. My day pass evidently does not cover it and it would be bad to make my friends stay down. Sigh, in the end, it was 90 Fr on transport alone... Way more than what I would pay for 2 months of transport!! I still feel that the price of that ticket was too much, regardless of the fact that the rail is the world's oldest cogwheel rail.
It is a historical landmark. Does it justify the cost? Maybe... The train goes up at an incline of 48% and it was really steep. Lets just say that if it weren't for the powerful braking system, it would have been one hell of a roller coaster down...

But the view up there was amazing. The sky was pretty clear then, so we could see pretty far. The only glitch was... my camera phone was acting up again, so what pictures that I had taken weren't saved. ARGH.... Never mind, I took a mental picture. It was cool. And you could always google for the pictures. Besides, the top was pretty calming and good for reflective thoughts. Enough thought for a half hour stay anyway, since we had to catch the tram down.

Anyway, we were left with so little time after that that we could only visit 3 places for sights. It was an express trek through the town to get to the places, like Paris all over again. Overall, the day was not really fun for me, spending 90Fr on transport and 7 hours on traveling (3 hours to go, 2 hours to Alpnachstad and back, and 2 hours back to Lausanne) was not my idea of fun. Then again, not all experiences are sugar and fluff.

But to be fair, it had its redeeming qualities. The streets of the not-so-packed Lucern is nice to wander around if we had the time, and the boat ride, expensive tram ride and the summit were all picture worthy and awe inspiring experiences. It just happened that it wasn't a good day for me to step out of Lausanne. Maybe next time.

Oh, did I mention that I'ld be heading to Budapest, Vienna and Prague at the beginning of next month, before my exams? It would be a one week affair with Bratislava as a day trip. Hopefully it would be fun and rewarding.
The Swiss Lion Monument. It is great as a Desktop picture! Its the desktop picture of the computer at home. ;-D

Scenic Saturday

I finally got round to visiting Vevey and Montreaux yesterday.

After hearing so many praises about these two places and how beautiful they are for the past few months, I finally made the trip down myself to see what the fuss was about. Nah lah, actually, I just don't wanna get stuck in my room all day since I have a rare break from my deadlines. So, it was off to Vevey and Montreaux we go.

From my friend, Vevey and Montreaux was all about the lake-side view. Both cities are very close to each other on the shores of one end of Lake Geneva. But, besides the view, it was also the annual Museum Night for most museums in Montreaux and Vevey after 5 pm. That was a definite reason for me to go since the entry to Chateaux de Chillon is at 10Chf on normal days. What to do? Poor student on a tight budget could only go to places for a very good reason...

There was this weekly saturday market going on at the big square of the village and it just so happened that they were also having a huge sale on second hand books. All books selling for an unbelievably low price! But there was one bad thing about it. All the book were in French... Ah well, but it was still very interesting to browse through the titles. I bought an Enid Blyton book (in French, of course) for 1 Chf only!!! Cheap right! My friend had bought another book, a huge thick book on the adventures in Switzerland. The organiser of the store could not find any price tag on the book, so after thinking a while, he sold the book to my friend for 1 Chf. I felt very cheated after that, but ah well, I got a French book that I could actually finish! LOL...

We then got to Place de Chaplin, a little park where a statue of Charlie Chaplin stands, gazing out into the waters that are speared by a gigantic fork.

Yes, you've read it right. A huge stainless steel fork.

I have got no idea what the fork was for, but for Chaplin, it seemed that he was stayed in Vevey at some point in his life and so they built a monument for him there. I wonder if I became famous, would they build a monument for me here in Rhodanie? haha...

I digress, so let me get back on track by posting some pictures of me in Vevey.

The Enid Blyton book that I bought.
A French version of Jane Eyre that I didn't buy...
Along the streets of Vevey
The Fork that almost speared me. Look how pretty the background is.
A rendezvous with Chaplin.

After Vevey, we went to Montreaux for the next leg of the trip.

Little known to some tourists, Montreaux also has an old town. My friend, who had visited Montreaux countless times before, had actually not been to the old town, and so, we went exploring. The old town of Montreaux is charming, but of a different charm than the other old towns that I had visited, like in Nice or Yvoire.
Lakeside view inMontreaux

Because Nice or Yvoire are popular tourist destinations, the place would have some people on the streets, walking around or just sitting at the cafes, sipping tea, coffee or wine. But in Montreaux, the streets were almost deserted bacause everyone was down at the lakeside, soaking in the sun and sight. I'm not complaining, because the absence of people and the presence of many open shops and traffic made the stroll much more pleasant. And there was this spot in the middle of the town that had a waterfall in the middle of a neighbourhood. Imagine the residents there! A waterfall in the backyard, the magnificent view of the lake in the front! All the more spectacular without the tourists crowding around.The Backyard, and...
the front yard!

Montreaux also had its own Saturday market going on, but it was an antiques and other what-nots rather than food and bread. Many interesting stuff, but some of the stuff were overpriced, in my opinion. Still, it was an interesting experience.

We then walked a long way to the Chateaux de Chillon. The chateaux is in a neighbouring town, not in Montreaux, and so was quite a walk. Once we got there, there was a pleasant surprise.

I'm not sure if it was a usual get up for the Museum, but the people in the castle were dressed as medieval people! We were greeted by ladies dressed in the medieval gowns and there were musicians and jugglers performing in the main square in the castle. There were also several story tellers in different parts of the castle recounting stories to any who stopped to listen. I sat through a story on how one oarticular person became the bear constellation and another on Paris and Helen of Troy. Didn't understand much of it, but it was an interesting experience listening to strange ladies in long cream gowns, with belt and crowns of leaves, recounting stories in French.

A performer playing some strange instument. His right hand rotates a gear while his left presses on keys. It is like a mechanical violin-piano thing.
This guy can even perform techno songs on it...

Storytellers who had the rapt attention of both adults and kids.

A campfire....

To roast hot dogs on wooden sticks!! (Why isn't this guy in medieval costume like everyone else?)

The castle had been a source of inspiration to many writers and poets. Lord Byron was so inspired by a prisoner's account of his days in the castle's dungeon that he wrote The Prisoner of Chillon. Other famous authors who were similarly inspired were Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo.
Some lady who decided to freak everyone out by sitting near the entrance of the cellar. She was playing the role of the unfortunate maiden who had to sigh in dismay at the rate of growth of the weeds. :-D
Outside, in another part of the castle, there was a roaring campfire where tourists could sit around to roast some sausages. At 4 Chf a piece, it was a tourist blackmail. But the performers were performing there as well, and so we stopped for a little while to enjoy the show before continuing the tour.

After the castle, it was starting to get a little late, and so we decided to head back to Vevey to check out another museum there. Originally, we wanted to go to the Museum of Swiss Games. However, it was really far, about the same distance as the chateau was from the train station, and so we went to a museum that was much nearer, the Museum of Food. It was interesting. I was just glad that I ate dinner before entering, otherwise I might be tempted to pinch the displays off. :-P

Looks good enough to eat eh?

Evening view of the lake in Vevey.

Homework Break

Hi,

Yes, I'm not dead from the work yet. And no, I'm not really serious about evolving into a total geek. Gintama is too much too give up on. :-D

Anyway, I sttended a showing of PolyJapan in school today. PolyJapan is a "club" that halds screenings for japanese shows, mainly animes, on a weekly basis. I know it was a slightly overdue visit, but I decided to pop by today's screening to see what goes on in the theatre since I had stayed back in school for an OS homework and had time to spare (since I finished about 2/3 of my stupid graph theory homework).

It was like a cinema, except that it was a lecture theatre. Someone brought in popcorn, and so it even smelled like the cinemas. They were selling japanese food outside the auditorium, like instant noodles and canned drinks from Japan. Evidently, the people here knows how to use chopsticks pretty well. My exchange buddy told me that most people here eat Asian food pretty often and so they know how to use chopsticks. Cool, but not really surprising.

There was nothing much to say for the show because I felt that the plot was really rehashed. Probably good for kids, but not for me. Gintama has spoiled my taste in animes... :-D Really, go check it out for a few moments of craziness in your life. Not suitable for too young kids though, if you get my drift. ;-P

ARGH!!!

Annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying!!!!!

I've been staring at the same question for my graph theory applications homework for the past half hour and the problem does not seem to vanish from the question paper! Why didn't I have the power to glare away difficult questions?!

Argh!!!!

I feel so stupid sometimes. More so now that I'm in university than ever. University just makes me feel dumb. I look at those questions and I start to wonder if there was something wrong with my understanding capabilities. Why can't I seem to understand what the stuff is talking about? It doesn't help that these academic stuff seem to like to drown students in gallons of technical jargon and weird greek symbols.

Really, these people have to start to realise that the rest of the world is speaking english!

Its not just graph theory, but everything else too! I had gotten back the results for my latest prob and stats test and it was pretty bad. I don't think that it was a consolation that the test was just a "bonus" and that it didn't matter as long as one did well for the finals. Not when I happen to see a guy scoring 47/50 for the test, which was supposed to be difficult. And upon review of the answers, I realised that I didn't understand the concepts as well as I thought I had.

Argh... Seriously, I feel dumb...

The other modules, operating systems and digital photography, are still okay. Not like I am flunking them, but neither am I ace-ing them.

Was it a problem with my focus, or was it because I am not studying hard enough for it? Perhaps it was my study habits. I should start to reviewing the lectures everyday... Start to evolve into a total geek...

Dear all,

you are gathered today for the demise of the once fun-loving and vivacious Ho Jie Hui. She has vowed henceforth to become a total geek, devoting all her time to her studies and letting nothing come between her and her books except food, drinks, the occasional toilet breaks and Gintama.

With her evolution, it would not be surprising to see her sport thick glasses, messy hair with several bald spots (due to the excessive pulling of hair when frustrated) and a bad tea-breath from all the cups of tea that she consumes.

Let us take a quiet moment to reflect on the lost moments where she allowed you to annoy her because she had the time to be annoyed. Now, she would just be annoyed at her books. Joy to all who will be saved from her annoyance.

Amen.

:-D

Ahh... that feels much better. Hey, blogging (or whining about personal stuff) really does wonders for one's mood. Sigh... Back to staring at the next question of the homework. Damn...

Yvoire

After working hard (or trying not to play too much ;-D) I decided to join my friends to a trip to France again. This time, it was on a tour, with a bunch of students, to the medival city of Yvoire.

Yvoire (yee-vo-ahr) is situated on the banks of Lake Geneva, which means it is about 2 hours of a leisure boat ride from Lausanne's Ouchy harbour. For 30 Fr, it was a pretty good deal. The trip included the transport to and fro with a guided tour of the city. Instead of saying that it is a city, it is more like a village that is really a tourist destination. Tourism is definitely the main trade there, as could be seen by the many shops selling really touristy stuff like toys or souvenirs.

One can certainly see how Yvoire got its reputation as one of "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France", or the most beautiful villages of France. It has a picturesque view of Lake Geneva and the buildings there are small and quiant (read: restored for tourism) and has a chateau, a garden and a church that are of tourist interest. Unfortunately, we did not visit any of these 3 places. :-p Well, it wasn't due to the lack of trying. For some reason that I did not catch (because the tour was conducted in French) the chateau seemed to be off limits and the garden had an entrance fee of 7.50 euros. Since all of us were not really interested in flowers and that we had only 1 hour left to explore, we decided to skip it. I think the flowers all around the village is impressive enough.

Indeed, you can really tell that spring is here. Not just the presence of the blooming flowers, but also from the swarms of flies that seem to decide on congregating in the village today. Maybe swarms was an ovverstatement, but the flies were definitely a nuisance. The absence of most insects is a definite plus for winter.

Moving on, the town of Yvoire has 2 ports and fishing seemed to be the number 2 dominant industry, after tourism. I didn't really understand what the tour guide was saying, but it seemed that in the middle ages, a duke realised the stategic position of Yvoire and decided to fortify the area in order to secure the lake for some battle. And thus, strong walls and the chateau could seen, restored to its formal glory as I believe, from its past disuse.

One could see that the French people took pride in preserving the place, even if it was only for tourism. The flowers looked very well taken of, the streets were clean, fountains of portable water were around. Even the medieval houses that are now shops and restaurants are all well preserved, with most windows having a trough of flowers adorning it.

Makes me think about Singapore. Sigh, due to the space constraints and the turnover rate of buildings, it is a miracle that we even have a building, not to mention several buildings, that are well preserved and still in use. I guess its because the usefulness of the buildings in a cultural and commercial sense (more commercial than cultural, perhaps) outweighs the costs of maintaining and replacing them with newer ones.

Anyway, picture time:
A monument for some war, I think, outside the tourism office. Note how the tulips are in bloom.
Tulips seem to be the favourite flower here.
The entrance to the village proper.
The chateau of Yvoire, as captured from over the head of an unknown guy.

Just a disclaimer: It is not that I like France in particular. I would LOVE to go to another country but it seems that just nice France is the closest country that I can go to without taking too much time to travel.

Anyway, I am planning for a trip to Budapest, Prague and Vienna with some friends for early next month, before the exams (I like to live dangerously... Or not...) That's 3 countries in a shot. Ha. Looking forward to it! Especially since I heard that one could get a good meal in Budapest for like 5 euros!

Definitely looking forward to some meat. MEAT!!! I can finally afford to eat decent meat then!!!
Not frozen, not in the form of some mashed up burger, but really SLABS of steak dripping with awesome-ness!

Ok, I better end the post here before I salivate all over my keyboard.

Ciao~!

Pictures Galore

Sorry to take so long in posting the pictures. I had been busy studying for another test. Now that it is over (don't ask how it went...), I have a little time on my hands. So, here are the pictures!

Here are the three friends whom I travelled with. From left, Jessica, Esther and Felicia.
This is a park in France, near the Notre Dame.
This is outside a cathedrale that was closed in Cannes.
At Palais Longchamp in Marseilles
Some one was giving out free dessert as a promotion to their product. Free food means second helpings s'il vous plait!! :-D
A very cool picture of me taken by Esther. I look positively murderous!! :-D Watch out. Don't annoy me or I'll knock your head with my deadly camera and slap your face with my painful maps!

A quick break between studies

I have forgotten how nice it was to have a shower without worrying that my teeth would shatter from excessive chattering...