1. Bloody construction noise
This was originally going to be point 2 but at the moment, I’m fucking annoyed at the construction that’s going on right next to me in the lift landing. Grrrr!!!!! Hammering and dropping things down the lift shaft. At least it’s not drilling. There has been non stop construction in this neighbourhood for the past ten years. First it was the KPE, then the Circle Line, then the market, then lift upgrading, and soon to come, the hawker centre. What next??! Can’t we have a little peace and quiet??! Someday, I hope some clever engineer somewhere will figure out a way of doing this kind of thing without sound. It’s driving me MAD.

2. Graduation
Not really in the mood to talk about my graduation because of the above point. That kind of noise seriously gets on my nerves. Anyway, it was a good night. Boring speeches, except from that second valedictorian guy. Nautical metaphors all round with people rolling eyes. Very bored, reluctant and pissed off sounding person doing the announcing of names. Walking across the stage, shake hands with goodness knows who, take the fake scroll then walk off and exchange the fake scroll for the real transcript. I kind of liked the fake scroll. It looks good. Saw Mr Chua from MJ. He got awarded Masters in South East Asia something. Can’t remember. Didn’t even know it was him till the name got flashed up and his face was on the big screen. He was one of the first to get it.

Lots of photo taking but I’m not in the mood to put any up. Facebook’s strangely not yet inundated by photos. I think it’s cos all the camwhores had to work today. Tonight I suppose.

Duan Hui came for the ceremony. Feel kind of bad that I had to get the ticket back from TY cos the bro managed to get off at the last minute. She got me and Sumi flowers. *muacks* That was really nice of her.

3. Torchwood: Children of Earth
Torchwood season 3 is a series of 5 episodes. Well, a miniseries I suppose, being shown on 5 consecutive nights. Just watched the first 2 on Youtube. Freaking awesome! It fells like a movie actually, rather than a tv series. Can’t wait for the next episode. Pity SG doesn’t show this kind of stuff. Wonder if can get BBC if I subscribe to cable. But… in the meantime, have to rely on Youtube. Jack’s seriously indestructable. He got blown up but he came back to life. Grew a new body out of the bits that was left of his old one. Quite interesting look into Jack’s personal life too. Apparently he has a daughter. And a grandson. How cool is that? And then there’s his relationship with poor Ianto. *pets Ianto*

4. Cameras and Gimp
I like my new camera a lot. Ok, well, not so new, by now. But one huge gripe I have with it is that it doesn’t have the ability to imprint the date on the picture. I really liked that feature in my old camera because me with my horrible memory can use it to remember. With this new camera, if I want to put in the date, I have to change the resolution of the photo. Last night, after taking the graduation photos, I had to edit every one of them with Gimp to put the date in. Very inconvenient. Especially since I had to do the same thing for the 30 odd photos I had and Gimp didn’t seem to allow “cut-and-paste” or batch edit. You know, sometimes, software can be super powerful and do a lot of wonderfully powerful thngs, but there are times when all the user wants is a simple fix and the software can’t do that without a lot of painful struggling, hair tearing and blood pressure rising. Ok, I’m learning how to use Gimp but the process is freaking painful. There aren’t many reference books out there about using Gimp. One of the hazards of open source software I suppose. :p

5. Computer
My internet connection’s going wonky again. I’m seriously thinking about getting a router for upstairs. Except that I don’t really know how it’s supposed to work. But the situation’s getting ridiculous. I see more of NGEAR_Spark and Wee@Pipit than I do of my own internet network. There are times when I can even pick up Daryl’s network and he lives a significant distance away from me. But I can’t pick up my own home network. And I am beyond angry at that. It’s especially annoying at night when I’m pressed for time and I can’t get anything done because the bloody connection dies every five minutes. And I still haven’t discovered where the wireless antenna is on my Macbook. It’s just a nagging question I’ve had since I got it.

That reminds me, I’ve got to run that system maintenance thing I installed recently. Maybe it’s me coming off a Windows background but I feel like the computer may be slowing down because since I bought it a year ago, I have not done any system maintenance at all, apart from virus scans.

I took out the battery of the Macbook and I’ve got it running on AC current these days. Didn’t want to spoil the battery since I’ve got the comp on usually more than 12 hours a day. And then this thing I was waiting for to happen happened. It was the day I put the laptop on another stand to find a good wireless spot. Now, I have to move my laptop around a lot to find a good spot and I’ve got the wires trailing under the table. So I knew it was only a matter of time when I would, in the process of moving the thing around, accidently yank the AC wire out. Cos of Mac’s design of the plug, to ensure that if anyone tripped over the wire, the plug would easily come free of the computer and prevent it from crashing to the floor with the wire, it’s really easiy to yank the plug out. So, that’s what happened. The wire got tangled in my foot, I didn’t notice and whoops! The whole computer blacked out. Had to restart it. Can’t be healthy for the comp.

Sorry for a lot of bitching. The construction noise is making me irritable so the bitching increases. Makes me feel like hitting something.

I’ve got a sore throat. It was already kind of sore since yesterday and it got worse last night cos I didn’t drink any water at all for the entire evening. Kind of inconvenient to go to the toilet wearing the graduation gown. And the UCC hall is dry. So, my throat feels like sandpaper. Been drinking lots of water today and as a consequence, having to pee a lot. Not really helping my throat but I suppose the peeing is helping to cleanse the system. Hope the throat gets better real soon. Choir’s having a showcase tomorrow night and I have to cantor on Sunday. What a wonderful time to lose my voice.

I suppose I could bitch much more if I wanted to but it wouldn’t serve any purpose whatsoever. So I guess I’ll stop here and go back to inwardly cursing the damn construction guy for making so much noise. Seriously. These days, if it’s not hammering and drilling and throwing things down the lift shaft, it’s the karang guni man honking and hollering. All karang guni men sound the same, it seems. Else it’s one guy constantly doing this block over and over and over. Shut up.

Oh yeah, I was reading through my transcript and I found out that my entire uni life, my grades ranged between C and A-. And the first time I got A-, I got it from Pakir. So I suppose I should be grateful and not bitch about her. Looking at my results from Year 1, sem 1, I got a C+ for EL. Wonder why the hell I decided to major in it in the end. Nice bits of nostalgia though, looking at the forgotten modules and grades and remembering all the torturous times.