Academic Week 1

Phew. I`m actually quite relieved.

I think a lot have happened, and I really felt like a different person already.

There are a few milestones this week.

1) Completing my internship.

2) Moving out of my old house and into a new one with my classmate

3) Resolved my credit hour issue

4) Settled my course registration

5) Selected a lecturer for my Final Year Project

6) Dealt with my whole emotional swings with regards to my previous relationship.

7) Rejoin the Student Publication Board.

Things will be slightly different this year and I`m looking forward to a exciting final year :)

The last weekend

It was as quiet as it can get. One would expect people to party till they drop dead on their last. Any last. Here I am, spending 12 hours in the office, walking endlessly on Jusco, wondering whether I should buy the shoe that I have been eying for the past one month.

There are things I had in mind. Like going for a hike at Penang, walking around the day, or just spending my afternoon at the botanical garden. But in my plans, there`s always someone there. In the absences of companies, those plans doesn`t seem too interesting anymore. The internet and arcade filled in the void just fine.

So, here`s to my last weekend at Penang. A toast to the end of 4 months's (academic) isolation and a life back in Malacca.

*in all fairness, I did enjoy my time here. I had my share of clubbing, hangovers during the morning in office, and sports till I can barely move. Cheers.

There will be times when one listen to a song, he'll say, 'that`s exactly what I`m feeling right now'. Often, we marveled at how words by other can accurately reflect our feeling, especially when we fail to express them with our own.

The following poem is written by Joash back in 2007. It was as relevant then as it is now. In the midst of uncertainty, I find this comforting.

Title : To say I love you.

To say I love you, is more than just words from the mouth
It's more than just mere stuff that any guy would say to a pretty girl hoping that the girl would respond
But it's a commitment I promise not to you, but to myself
To be there for you whether or not you need me by your side

To say I love you, is more than just a present
A gift that can be bought with money or prizes
But it's a price that has been paid for, with tears and pain
To put that smile not just on your face, but in your heart

To say I love you, is nothing about wanting you
It's nothing about hoping that you can be there for me or that you will always be by my side
But it's about letting you have the best you can ever want
Even if it means that you will never put me first even if I make you the princess of my heart

To say I love you, is always about you and you alone
Your happiness, your laughter, your joy, your life
To hope that you will always have the best in life, to give you the best of me
Even if it requires me to love you without being loved in return

To say I love you, it means more than anything to me
Coz I know that at the end of the day, it's not what you do in return that truly matters
But what I've done for you, and what I can do to you, that could make a difference
Even if love hurts to much and if the process gets to painful

You see,
when many can love each other, not everyone can love without being loved in return
when many can wait for each other, not everyone can wait for nothing

Yet when someone makes that decision to wait and love with no assurance of a future,
that brings out the true essence of love altogether
Coz Love, after all,
is about giving without getting
is about paying without receiving
is about dying to yourself for others
and to hang on even when it gets too hard and tough.

To say I love you,
I truly mean it, and I do mean it. Just hope you'll understand.

Inspiration

I dire need for writer`s inspiration to write my Internship report, Final Year project proposal and Graduate School application. Over usage of verbal broken English translate into writing as well. I can`t help but loathed the things I write. Message are lost in the midst of those jumbled up sentence.

Where do journalist get their inspiration from?

I`m sad.

Today, I'm sad:

because I felt like I`m invisible at the work place.

because a friendship was lost due to food.

because I couldn`t even keep a conversation with someone I really want to talk to at that moment.

because when I really need someone to listen, no one in mind pops up.

because nothing can be done to change these no matter how sorry, or hard I try.

Effie's visit to KL

About 3 weeks ago, Effie came with her bf, Jonathan for a short holiday in Malaysia. I find my self knowing embarrassingly little about my own country. We were to meet at the Islamic Arts Musuem, and I don`t know where it is. Heck, I never even knew we had one.

*and I`m pretty damm sure all you Malaysians who are reading this have no clue where it is either.

It was a pretty good museum. Fantastic design, surprisingly well maintained (obviously from government funding), and like all government`s white elephant project, completely deserted. At the cafe, we were pretty much the only person around. While every single road in kl is cramped with family cars heading for their weekend shopping.

I forgot to take picture in that museum, but I did take a few at the Bird Park about 1km away from the place. Bet you didn`t know either, that the KL Bird Park is the largest covered aviary in the world. I`ll swear I never going to offer to be a tour guide in KL anymore. lol. (at least without researching before hand).

The park was quite amazing in my opinion. They had a cafe where one can have tea and food at the balcony with birds flying around you. And we a silly looking horn bill staring at us for quite some time.

Little did we know, it was a diversion. The horn bills real aim is the left over food at the table beside us.

With a bill that long, its a wonder how they eat. Chewing a simple fries required techniques of throwing, biting, moving it to a different angle, bite again...... jeez, and I thought our life are difficult.

*btw, anyone realized that Effie look remarkably identical to Claire in that picture?.

Random Ideas #34049883349404

The technology of heating up things through waves have long existed. Microwave sends rf signals in 2.5ghz which only elements like water and fats absorbs. I used to think they achieve some form of resonance, and through superposition, we have atoms vibrating at a extremely high amplitude. Just like ppl, when you move a lot, you feel hot. (ok, lousy analogy), but essentially, with the higher energy, we have higher vibration and hence, higher temperature.

I was just thinking if we can somehow send wave that is out of phase with the vibration, we can effectively halt the atom`s movement and achieve extremely low temperature. The only problem is that this theory is flawed. Atoms doesn`t vibrate in a sinusoidal wave, (or at least I don`t think it does), which is why the term was 'RF is being absorb by water molecules" rather than resonates. I`m also not sure how atom vibration in solid state differs from those in gaseous, where atoms zooms randomly in Brownian movements.

But it`s quite a cool concept to think of anyhow. Refrigeration will take embark on a new process. (it already is with the emergence of thermoacoustics).

And on another thought, it will be quite cool to have a portable microwave device also. Just beam at a food and it heats up. Beam at ppl you don`t like, and look at them get boiled. Lol.

The words not spoken.

I came back to say that I miss her.

But somethings are better left unsaid.

Liquid Nitrogen vehicle - going crazy part 3

'Everything that can be invented has already be invented. '
US officer in the Patent Office.

While inventions are still popping up every year, for the average idiot like me, it couldn`t be more true. As I continue my research into solar collectors and heat engines, I had this thought that we might have been looking at things just one side. All conventional technology deals with concentrating heat to create a the temperature difference needed for power.



And it hits me, why not look at creating temperature difference to usage of liquid nitrogen. It`s abundant, 78% of air, and the boiling of nitrogen results in no pollution at all. Use it along with a stirling engine we can run our vehicles, (or add in a generator for an electric vehicle if you`re too concern with torque changes)

A plot of music Anime - going crazy part 2.

*this is a continuation of myself being driven to the brink of insanity due to my ongoing research of my fyp. So once again, do not question the logic of the things I say.

I have typically narrow down my scope of research to solar generation; Stirling engine, thermoacoustics and micro chp (combine heat and power). And what really impress me right now was the whole idea of Thermoaccoustic. Simply because no one really understood it completely yet.
That a lot of grey area, giving rooms for speculation and bizzares theory.

Or it makes a good plot of anime. (where logics can be bend anyway).

Thermoaccoustic accounts for the conversion of thermal (heat) energy to sound. With some stacks (stell wool or other suitable metals), and heat, you can in a way achieve some form of resonance, and some application of the doopler effect, (don`t ask me how). walah, we get our kinectic energy.

So how is this anyway intersting. Now, imagine for some weird reason, the resonance can achieve 1000x its amplitude if a form of arrangement sound and pitch is right. This creates a whole new energy generation through musics. And for some even stranger reason, classical musics provides the best output. Whoever produces the best music are regard as the most powerful person as he controls the most energy.

And here`s a story about a talented young pianist who`s growing up in an academy that trains this 'energy harvest' (think of a better name). In his quest, his being subjected to all corporate conspiracy, politics, and wars.

and as of know, I kinda lost interst in what I`m writing. So yea.....going back to google and wikipedia for my research.

Of Stirling, solar, engine, heat and energy.

Reading about things and gaining knowledge is always a good thing. But reading too much without being able to comprehend them simply makes one more confused. There too many random things going on in mind right now, and confuse is probably an understatement of the state I`m in now. For the past few days, I was blur the whole day and was having sleepless night and frequent nightmares.

I`ve been matter loading the entire week in preparation for my final year project topic selection. I knew I like energy and always wanted to do something regarding conservation, regeneration or co-generation. It started with types of alternative energy, to relativity theory, to quantum physic, particle physics and now back to simple thermodynamics. And now mass is energy, time is non existence, (in the energy context), lights are counted in packets, and heat can be directly converted to sound before converting to kinetic for electricity.

And I have lost all sense of logic, and reference, and limits of nature. Currently, there`s this thing that have been bugging me: why do we use energy to remove energy. Think of it in the context of air conditioning and refrigeration. It consumes significant energy to chill an area, taking away heat (a form of energy) from that system.

The simplest explanation will be of course lie to the fact that we are decreasing temperature from the ambient, (a point of reference), and hence creating some form of potential (not sure if this statement is right since heat is uni directional,). And of course, not all heat is useful (concept of exergy). But the entire earth can be recognize as a form of energy storage, and in reference with the absolute (say 0 kelvin, or the universe), our ambient is itself a form of potential.

Humans have raised the earth`s temperature by almost 2 degree celcious, through all the industrial acticities. That`s a massive increase of energy. Why is it possible to trap energy but not being able to release it. What kind of technology that will be able to operate between the ambient environment and the limit of absolutes?

*I know none of those made sense. Hoping someone can knock back some of it back to my head.

Island Bound

There are many ‘first in life. Your first walk, your first time out of home, your first birthday, your first day at school…… This is my first time, taking a ferri through a car. (or was it a car through the ferry). Anyway, I was pretty excited about the whole idea of driving up a big floating machine, and crossing over to Penang Island by the sea, and the car moving with the engine off.

It took about 15 minute to cross over , and if you don`t have to queue up too long, it is the best route to take when crossing from Butterworth to Penang. Crossing over by the bridge will be another 30km detour. Using the ferri saves fuel, time and (fun?).

Pei Nee finds the wind annoying for messing up her hair.

3 more weeks here and counting. I need to explore Penang as much as possible before I leave. There are a few more landmarks that I really wanted to to visit. The botanical garden, reserve forest, the dam, and also the cruise ship. It almost made me not wanting to leave Penang. :)

September 09

It`s closed to a full month since I last updated!!! I`m not sure if it`s because of the lack of any interesting thing happening, or just pure laziness. So, based on my photo albums, here`s a summary of what happen since my last entry.

I finally blew a birthday candle this year. Albeit only one of them. Yay :)

Had a on site construction experience. Going into a R4A Telekom manhole. ewww.

Finally solved the Rubix Cube.(through layer by layer method). *after being challenge by sze ping to solve it within half a day.

And my kittens grew bigger!! they are no more the tiny, blue eyes cat anymore. But they are still equally cute and much more playful. The white one constantly bully the poor quite black kitten. Saw her bitting another`s tail.

I realized that I took only a few pictures last month. Even when there`s photo worthy opportunities, I was kinda lazy. Like the night at Sky Bar, the sunrise at Penang Bridge and the visit to Islamic Art Musuem. I had lots of pictures of the kittens though. :)

4 more weeks till the end of my internship. I miss you Malacca, will be back soon!!!