my new fridge... if you're interested in knowing what jj eats, here's your opportunity! (click for some brilliant annotations)

whoa, is my blog becoming a photo blog now?? hope not. i promise to write more stuff when fun stuff happen!

remember what i wrote in the last post about a potential gap year? i just received some invitations to interviews, which may just mean that i may get a job at the end! fingers crossed... anyway, i already am quite resigned to the idea of a gap year, so i'm not overly nervous

found a really interesting function of flickr - upon clicking on "add note" i get to annotate the picture, by selecting a field and typing a note, which is really awesome! so, if you move your mouse over the annotated area, the note appears. what more, you can add notes to your friends' pics! check it out here: multinational dinner

post-MET formal... there was this drinking ladder competition and john challenged me. we tied at drinking and smashed our glasses against the table. wine is actually not that difficult to down, but great fun anyway.

chicken salad, dried leek and mango yoghurt

so far, i've been trodding down a well beaten path of graduates going into uni after school and now, work right after uni, that it is almost a given that i would be looking for a job now (and i have)... recently been thinking of the opportunities that a gap year would offer me - things that have allowed me to warm up to the idea of delaying entering the working world. and a gap year does seem to offer a really great alternative to working, the more i think about it.

travelling - haven't been travelling much these past few years, only perhaps been to one trip every year. should have taken the opportunity of my student status and holidays and cheap tickets to go around europe. a gap year would give me time to go around the world to places such as south america (hola!) greece, thailand, malaysia (visit relatives), taiwan, japan or return to shanghai etc... but of course i would have to choose diligently where i want to go...

design - also entertaining the idea that i would enjoy doing something design-y - graphic/publication/newmedia/product design. before my focus turned towards the City, i've always wanted to something fun-filled and that i would enjoy. i've done many half-hearted attempts at designing, but my more accomplished pieces are a result of working for a society or project, not out of self interest (sadly), which shows that an interest needs a bit of motivation for it to really become a hobby. for example, i had planned to begin my own website which would incorporate a blog for about 2, 3 year already, but since other priorities always existed (like other projects, or worse, computer games!) i never got around to it, so here it is, a blog set up in 5 mins - actually not that bad!
anyway, back to the gap year - perhaps i would be able to get an internship working for a design company or enroll myself in a design course. would be good fun i reckon! (oh dear, i sound so british)

job hunting - yes, that too - hopefully i would have found one by the end of the next milkround (sept to jan). then it would be finance and consulting apps all over again. sigh!

but i run in the risk of setting my mind too firmly on the gap year too early and then suddenly get a graduate job and then facing a painful choice of rejecting one or the other. i've already almost convinced myself to the Great Alternatives of the gap year...

tomorrow (today, really) i have two hours of spanish only! which gives me time to catch up on my sleep as well as backlog of work (work apps that is).

the only thing is, as past experience has indicated, i can only either sleep lots or do work or waste time (often the latter). time tends to catch you (no i dont really mean you) offguard. it does this by giving a bit of spare time, which encourages people to squander the time. after which you feel utterly guilty having wasted the time. on the other hand, if you worked productively, then after that, you lament the fact that you could have got some rest and respite from a busy schedule. well, i dont know about you, but that's usually the case for me - achieving the right balance and using your free time wisely is difficult.

so its the classic case of the discontented lamenter (me), always dissatisfied with what he has or gets... i guess one solution is to sleep! you almost always feel more energetic after a good sleep. trouble is, sleep can be addictive... plus, sleep is also too easily put off, which i have lots of experience in (like now...). okay, i think this monologue has degenerated into a bit of a mess and i shall discontinue this at your benefit.

i better get some sleep. -_-

woke up early to do spanish... just to realise that it was a 15 minute thing, so i took 1.5 hours as usual, as i was answering emails and uploading photos. i really need to disaggregate my tasks!

sooty, my hero! 

so far so good... seems i've overdelivered on my promise to try to get my blog updated often!

today, i had some very interesting lectures on technology management and didnt fall asleep (well for most of it) considering i had only a four hours of sleep yesterday night. after that we had the NPI exercise and then had a case study session with my genesis team! made some real progress there, as to developing a better approach to preparation and presentation which was very useful. and then we had a 5 ppl valentines dinner! yummy indian, bangladeshi restaurant called saffron along regent street - suprisingly open atmosphere too. ok, i think i should limit myself to this much posting - have spanish to do, so i need to get some rest now and get it done tomoro morning before 9:00 lectures... did i mention i was late again today?? hoping to break that cycle tomorrow, if not for a day or two!

here's the result of a "new product introduction" (NPI) exercise I had in MET. the lego programming represents a car which our groups are supposed to design.

in the group there were people responsible for marketing + sales, project management, software engineering (ME!), hardware engineering, etc... and then we created this ultra-mini version of the integrated design project robot in the second year, this time under two hours and with lego! great fun - havent played with lego for ages!

we are supposed to create a car in preparation for a car show to car distributors. the basic car standard out of all of them is the ability to park automatically (wierd, but fun anyway). and there are certain customers that we can target - high end, low end, all with different demands, from large boot space (see the marbles), to great aesthetic appeal (look away from ours), musical tones (we programmed in ode to joy in ours) and lights (again, ours didnt work).

and so at the car show, each one was demonstrated (very humorous how the managing director would blag some deficiency!) and the rest of us voted using car orders (voted apart for our own). we came in 2nd place with net profit btw!

can blogs be addictive? i observed that in the past 6 hours, i could think of a dozen things to blog about. its great to have something so convenient to use and post online. and it serves as a great 'diary' to look back on - at least that is what i feel, having opened up my really sporadic entries in the past few years. i felt that i could recollect better memories from the time period of those diaries more so than experiences which i did not spend time writing about.

but how much do you need to post (or write in a diary) in order to really allow it to be something worth looking back upon / reflect in the future? and what type of experiences do you write down?

the whole process of recording something down on a blog/diary allows the person to recall and organise his/her experiences (OK i'm going to abandon political correctness now... i propose we write "hir" from now!). so not only does he get to spend some time reflecting over the experience shortly after it, but he also will have the fun of reading it again in the future and learning how stupid/bias/cool/great he was or charting how he matured over time.

there is also blogging in order to let other people read (and admire), so the content may be something different from that of a diary (maybe real feelings are not written down for example, or somethings moderated in order not to offend a particular person in the audience... depending on how revealing you are). people would also write to express an opinion (hmm, i don't think i have much of that, except when it comes to newspaper design!) which means it no longer is a ramble, but needs to have a high level of coherence and structure - laborious, i say.

some people just write random things down (like i probably intend to) while others use it as an online journal cataloguing what they've learnt from their experiences (which i might do) (oops, i don't mean to discount the value of the writing random things down!). anyway, i didn't intend this spiel to mean anything other than a recording down of my thoughts as i type.

have class tomorrow at 9:00 am. really happy that it is no longer 7:45 for the next two weeks, as we're taking a break from the industrial projects. some good work, but i think i should really end this entry, or i'll ramble on forever...

Picasa: Organize photos, instant albums, labels, stars, advanced picture search

i have really been avoiding applications this weekend - made a blog and picture gallery, and now, here's a brilliant picture management software called picasa. it is like, SLICK and i would recommend it to anyone. combines the effectiveness and simplicity of google with an awesome interface. even the slideshows fade impeccably!

incidentally, about two years ago, there was a survey on download.com for people to describe their ideal software with prizes to go with it. i spent about an hour writing up some specification of what i thought my ideal pic management tool would be. nothing came of that, but so far, picasa 2 incorporates just about everything i had in my vision! must be a coincidence i'm sure. i'm going to spend loads of time on picasa now... way to go google!

DSCF7953
Originally uploaded by polymerchicken.

does this white mug with juice not resemble an egg?

whoa! this is my first ever post on a blog! haha, well, actually i have had previous websites and blogs, except, they were really short term affairs. so, let's see if this one lasts more than a few days shall we?

by the way, check out my new photo gallery at http://www.flickr.com/photos/junjhen/

see ya around soon