Friday 31st March 2006

:)

Ahhh... these couple of weeks should go down in my personal student record as my better (or harder) working ones.

I measured MMIs (with a purpose no less), I lapped some wafers (7 pieces of 'em little cutties), I hard and soft baked, spin coated, developed, cleaned, exposed and aligned another 9 samples (not in that particular order) and lastly, today, I had the opportunity to use the evaporator to coat Titanium and Gold on 11 little pieces of wafers...

Wheee... research is fun...

Here's a little pot of gold to 'brighten up ur weekend....

Friday 24th March 2006

A Penny for ur Thoughts

Original British Monetary system:

Thursday 23rd March 2006

Meetings with my boss...

Meetings with my boss....

1. Makes me breakout with pimples
2. Are activities I highly try to avoid
3. Ignites my rusty engine to work a few times harder than usual. Either b4 or after.
4. Starts me on some new resolutions. Or revisit old ones.
5. Are nightmares just one notch worse than the falling down ones...

Sigh...

Tuesday 14th March 2006

making it up

Ooh... excited... gonna be the model for HL's makeup exam today.

Her theme is to get someone to be made up like Marilyn Monroe. Well... let's just say the trial attempt yesterday has sort of determined that she'll be having a challenging task today. And, coz my face is so big, she has to use almost double the amount of her usual store of "paint". Ah... do feel a tad sorry for her. These artistic hobbies are not cheap.

The whole makeup session took about 2 hours. Foundation, concealer (lots of those if u r working on big rough terrains like moi), blusher, highlight, cream, powder, and half a dozen other stuff just for the eyes alone, a few more for the lips. I gotta say, I totally dislike the sensation of eye liners. Give me the creeps. Luckily, HL is pro enough to put up with my sudden jerks and spasms. haha...

And while we were trying (successfully of course, she's a makeup artist now!) to paste the fake lashes on, we wondered who actually put those things on daily...First u need to get the width right, then u need to bend it in accordance to ur eye structure, & after that, u hv to apply the glue and paste it just above ur real lashes, not forgetting the curling of it after tht. Phew... and arduous job if u ask me.

Found a whole new respect for all the daily applicants of make-up. What courage and determinations u people possess. *kow tow*

And here is wishing HL all the best in her coming exams... Ganbatte!

Friday 10th March 2006

sleepy

If there was an award for the most frequently titled entry, i think "sleepy" would've tied it with "bored". For, unless we've got some great news to spew, we usually blog when we are in the above mentioned conditions.

That said, aside fm the calling of 'zhou gung', i'm blogging today to express my utmost joy in having to drag myself back to school tomorrow and become a salesman to promote the goodness of our school and alma mater for a whole day (Till 7pm on a SATURDAY!... like...i'm on Cloud 9). What a thrill! I could just imagine the look on every one of the eager youngsters awaiting to hear some words of pearl drop out of my sainted mouth. My voice would be like sugared donuts to their hungry stomach, my demo, the work of art that surpasses Van Gough in visionary and complexity. And nobody, and i mean, NOBODY would roll their eyes in boredom as they are given the glorious few minutes of their lives to get a glimpse of such wondrous work.

*Cough cum snort* Haha, I've run out of sarcasm and diet of ego to continue this message of the day. Back to my appointment with 'Mr. Zhou'. I think he is chatting with the guy fm the next cubicle. It's a ritual thing for them. His snoring can be heard at this time almost everyday.

Tuesday 7th March 2006

Stars and Satellites

In one of the rarer days when I actually looked up into the sky at around midnight, I saw a spattering of stars staring back at me. It was not the most magical of nights, neither were there so many stars that it felt like billions of stars were on display. Rather, if I had taken the effort to count, I would not have gotten more than 2 dozen or so. But grandeur aside, it was still a quietening experience, to look at the few faint stars and enjoy the moment of solace.

Although i do strongly suspect that the brightest of the lot was definitely a satellite. I wonder how many satellites are we able to see on an open sky?

Sunday 5th March 2006

Cempedak

I haven't eaten the Cempedak (pronounced as "Chempeda") fruit for years. It's rather rare to find them and eating them are usually rather gluey business. We recently sniffed some out and their heady fragrance tempted us so, my mom and I immediately decided to buy one to indulge ourselves with. This fruit is uniquely grown only in the SouthEast Asia countries, like Malaysia. It looks very much like a jackfruit, but smaller, juicier and way more pungent.

Given the task to open up the fruit, my trepidation of facing the sticky gum and messy business was forgotten as one after another of the golden coloured fruits presented themselves. The skin itself was less hard than I imagined, giving way after a slit from a rather blunt knife (u open it the way u would a palmolive). It's really quite an exquisite experience to extract each one of the soft fruits. All the cempedak were cocooned separately with one of their ends attached to the centre stem very much like pods attached to a core in one of those alien movies. Separating the fruits from the stem was like pealing a banana... soft... and easy. The silky texture was a pleasure to hold. We finished up almost the whole fruit in one seating.

Aside from the sweet flesh, the seed can also be eaten. It pales in comparison to fried chestnut, but after boiling it till it's soft, the seed still preserves the fragrance of the cempedak fruit. Ah... my mouth still waters thinking about it. Yummy.... don't you just love tropical fruits?

Friday 3rd March 2006

smudged

Having read an article in one of my backlog of magazines recently regarding the power problem in Iraq, I was pretty glum and disillusioned with war and its glory. Sure its easy to sell a bomb or two, and blast away dozens of cities, but when it comes to reconstructing, billions will simply leak down to the drain and dissappear before anything gets done again.

So dissappointed with 'adults' who are supposed to solve all problems, and end up buying wrong turbines and blaming each other like adolescence. With irresponsible individuals who blast away transmission towers for a pure joy of vandalism & a believe which I am still having a hard time figuring out.

In all these gloom, it's difficult to imagine any single party who is actually right, assertive and wise. Nobody was absolutely evil either. Some pitiful, some idiotic, and some, simply yearning for a few seconds of glory in their own twisted way.

In dramas and movies that we watch, we are always harping away when instead of a simple black and white, a director is able to evoke a sense of unsureness, of who is right or wrong. Unfortunately, in reality, it is so much easier to get a smudged stain. No one is ever a white or a black. Every human, organization, government, society, country and religion even, is never a pure colour.

Ah... us foolish beings, will we ever be able to live peaceably with each other in our little blue planet?

Wednesday 1st March 2006

march resolution

I am swearing off buying any new Korean and Taiwan series for a couple of months. Have been watching so much rubbish and yet I'm getting a headache just thinking of the junk i've still got to finish. At the back of my mind, I can just hear my conscience sneering and yelling "serve me right for buying 'em all in the first place." *ah... lament...*

Currently still reading: The Essentials of Clive Barker - Sigh! I was hoping for a collection of short stories fm Clive. Turned out to be an assembling of a few of his novels (Sacrament, Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, Galilee, Imajica, The Thieve of Always, etc. etc.) All he did was just taking a few pages fm each book and arranging them into a chapter, divided by stuff like 'Lives', 'Doors', 'Journey' and so on. Since I've read more than half of the books, it was quite a drag. Yawn!

Just finished reading: Past Mortem by Ben Elton - I loved this book. Fancied it much more than Popcorn and Dead Famous. I liked that Detective Inspector Edward Newson is such a funny and brilliant guy. The murdering methods were gruesome but highly imaginative. Phew! I'm glad I was not a bully back in my school days.