Yay! A new start...

Not having maths first thing on a Monday morning at 8 is already an improvement. Maths at 11 isn't too bad. The lecturer has an unusual but not incomprehensible accent, so it was pretty funny, especially when he pronounced <stem> as [stIm], which to me sounds like <steam> except maybe with a shorter vowel sound.

Ah. How appropriate that I have linguistics right after that. The linguistics lecture was really interactive. It was pretty difficult to take any notes for it, but the slides will be available online so it's alright. I'm so glad I don't have anything clashing with it. There was a mention of the "sidewalk / pavement / footpath" differences. Wow, exactly my kind of thing! Now I'll have an excuse to talk about it all the time, as if I ever needed one. xD

Just like last semester, I still have to have lunch at Manning on Mondays. I should really bring my own lunch since all the lectures I have are in the same building.

After lunch, it was the first lecture for software development. There wasn't really much that was covered in the lecture. I went to buy the textbook afterwards, but at least I still got home before it was dark. Riding home is so much more difficult. Still, I don't think I want to catch the train. I'm going to see how far into the semester I can go without catching a train.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning. I decided to go back to sleep, but I ended up lying in bed for two hours without falling asleep, so I decided to get up at 6:30. I actually feel really awake now.

My dad just left for the airport. I have my home all to myself now! That means I have to cook my own dinner though. Hmm, what should I have tonight?

This holiday will be fun... I'll start making my own clothes, knit something, read all the books that I never got around to reading before, and stay on IRC all day. So what if I have to do my own cooking? I get to try out some recipes that I'd never want to ask my dad to try.

Well, it's a one-question survey, but it's still a survey. The question is, what do you call the drink in the picture?

Results so far: (not including myself nor anyone in my family)
Iced chocolate: 11 (7 in Sydney, 1 on the Central Coast, 1 in New Zealand, 2 in Hong Kong with one of them being Australian)
Chocolate milkshake: 4 in the US, 1 in the UK - See, at least in Sydney, there is a difference between "chocolate milkshake" and "iced chocolate". Chocolate milkshakes are blended, and they don't have so much cream. This is what I call a chocolate milkshake.
Chocolate float: 1 in the UK, 1 in Africa
Ice-cream sundae: 1 in New Zealand - he insisted that it was an ice-cream sundae even after I said it's a drink ("a really runny one, then" xD). One person in the US also initially thought so but changed his mind.
Milkshake sundae - 1 in the US
Two people didn't know what that is. Well, some people did think it was a sundae, and one person asked if it's chocolate or coffee.
One person in Sydney, one in the US, and one in the UK said "just a chocolate drink".

There were also some people who didn't reply. Well, that's no surprise.

I did this whole survey just because someone on IRC didn't know what I meant when I said "iced chocolate". xD Looks like I've been reading Separated by a Common Language too much.

Why didn't I write about my exams anyway? Let's see... MATH1901 was harder than I expected, 1902 was easier than I expected, I left the LNGS1001 exam an hour early, and I left the ELEC1601 one half an hour early. I've also decided to keep doing advanced maths next semester (I don't know why I'm doing this to myself), and I've also got next semester's timetable. One more exam to go (this Friday) and that's it for the semester.

See, the iced chocolate thing is so much more interesting... xD

I spent most of the week hosting Skype conferences. Talking to my #ennui friends is fun! Last Saturday I even called someone on his home phone and used up the $2.36 of credit that I had (not one-to-one, on conference with the others). I don't think I'll do that again. If he wants in to any future conferences, he'll have to get Skype.

The good thing about talking on Skype so much is that I become more and
more comfortable with my voice. I used to hate my accent, but now I
feel a lot better about it. Then again, it helps that someone really
likes it. My #ennui friends' accents aren't all so easy to understand.
American accents generally make guys' voices even deeper than they
naturally are, sometimes to the point where they're harder to
understand. British accents are generally easier to understand. I also
know someone from New Zealand, and he does have a New Zealand accent,
but he doesn't say "fush and chups".

Obviously, that means I didn't do anywhere near as much studying as I should've, but even then, I'm actually looking forward to the exams. I felt this way for the whole day, so it's not because I've been to the gym or anything. Let's see what happens tomorrow...

Well, there are exams after next week, but all lectures are over!

I did manage to ride my bike for this whole week, including the past two days even though it rained. However, just when I was almost home, I was blown over (yes, it's that windy) and I chipped a tooth. Luckily enough, it wasn't painful at all and from outside you couldn't tell. That is, no scratches on my skin or anything like that.

I also brought my bike to the shop today to have the brake pads and the stand replaced, and I also bought lights.

Quite a lot actually happened this week. Let's see...

Sunday wasn't a very good day because there was a netsplit on serenia.net. I ended up talking on Skype with a few of the #ennui regulars though. Elven even said that he likes my accent! Now that's the reassurance that I need, because I don't actually like my own accent that much.

Monday was pretty good considering that there was no ELEC1601 lecture nor ENGG1804 tute. I came up with a question in the LNGS1001 lecture, and I told my friend. She said it was a good question, but I didn't have a chance to ask. In the ENGG1804 lecture in the afternoon, the person sitting in front of me was listening to music and he had it so loud that I could hear it. Sheesh... why did he even bother about turning up?

On Tuesday, I actually turned up to the MATH1902 lecture even though it was the only thing I had for the day, so I ended up spending more time travelling than actually being there. Other than that, I surely got onto IRC very early, and the netsplit on serenia.net was finally fixed.

My morning journey on Wednesday was scary. I normally put my water bottle, the lock and the chain in the basket in front of my bike. It all bounced out when I went over a bump on the road. Luckily, the truck behind me stopped, so I picked up my bottle quickly. I was looking around for the chain, and then I realised that it was under the truck. There was enough clearance for me to get in and pick it up, so I said to the driver "don't move!" and crawled under to get it, and then I apologised to the truck driver for making him stop. I was in the second lane at the time, so I had to pass the bus lane to get onto the footpath, and there was a bus coming towards me so it had to stop too, and the driver yelled at me. Somehow, that didn't take up any more time than I normally would though. It was still a good day though. After all, there was the linguistics study group! As usual, Daniel was late. I was eating a dorayaki when he arrived, and apparently it's somewhat exotic to him. xD We had to fill in an evaluation report in the linguistics lecture, and as usual I didn't really have any comments. It was supposed to be "anonymous", but I think just telling them what degree I'm doing kind of gives away who I am. (Well, not really. That was probably true for ENGG1804 because no one else did the same combination, but there's at least one other person in LNGS1001 who also does engineering so I wouldn't be the only one.)

It rained on Thursday! It was still dark when I was ready to leave home, so I waited around for 10 minutes, and I ended up arriving at the maths lecture 5 minutes later than I normally would, but still before the lecturer arrived. After maths, I went to the ELEC1601 tute for the quiz. I only got 2 out of 4 this time. The rest of the tute was fun though, because the tutor brought chocolate, and for each question that we answered we got to pick a chocolate (all individually wrapped, of course) from the bag. I got 7 altogether. The tutor mentioned that she likes xkcd comics, and that she goes on IRC a lot too... Now that's someone I would've got along with. I should've asked her what channels she frequent. Oh well. Too late. I ended up riding all the way home in the rain, and when I arrived at home, the colour is washing out from my gloves. How awkward!

What a week! Oh well, at least I survived the first semester, but only just. If I was blown over earlier, I might not even have got home to type all of this.

In the ELEC1601 tute today, we finally had the robot presentation. The tutors didn't have a stopwatch (well, one of them had a watch that has that function but didn't know how to use it xD), so I did all the timing.

This didn't take too long so I got home early today, but I would've been even earlier if the person with the poster arrived on time. Then again, I can't blame her for falling over on the way.

At the end, my group's robot took 3 minutes and 38 seconds to get to the end of the maze and back. Right from the beginning, the tutor warned me that I mustn't cheat when it comes to timing my own group. It was funny when another person in the group started shouting out fake times. He was actually quite convincing, and some people really believed him. I showed the tutor the real time at the end though. Of course, the robot played "Dans ma fusée" as I planned, but it was kind of awkward at the presentation when another person in my group admitted that he still didn't know what the song was. (Then again, can't blame him for not understanding French.) The tutor ended up writing "rocket song" on the board since that's what another group member used to refer to it. There were two groups each with their robot playing "Mission Impossible", "Super Mario", and "Eye of the Tiger", but of course my group was the only one to have "Dans ma fusée" (and also the only one to have a non-English song so far - I wonder if anyone in the next group had one too, but I doubt it). Very appropriately, it went on to "take a turn at the borders of space-time" (well, in the maze). May be it's a good thing that I didn't make it play the verse, as it's definitely not living up to it. ("J'vais plus vite que la lumière"? I don't think so.) Then again, no one will actually know.

This morning, for the first time, I rode my bike all the way to the university. In terms of time, it takes about as long as going by train because it takes time to wait for the train and also to get in and out of stations.

I managed to ride all the way back in the afternoon too.

I'm tired now, but this feels really good.

My next goal is to do this everyday for a whole week. Well, I don't think I'll be ready next week, so may be that can be my goal for next semester. (Looks like that my next goal should be to sort out my priorities first. xD)

Then again, turning up to class when my back is all wet isn't really such a good idea. I need to bring extra clothes next time. I considered taking off my top and then putting on my jacket and zipping it up, but I think I might end up forgetting and unzipping it. xD

First of all...

Happy birthday to Leeann!

Yes, I still remember.

I don't even have anything else to write about today. I've been really tired lately. All the cycling is really too much, Then again, it also makes me very happy, and it helps me sleep at night, so it's worth it. I rode all the way home on Friday, and it took me an hour (a slight improvement from an hour and 10 minutes when I did so two weeks ago). I should do this more often.

I stayed up late last night to finish off my assignment, and I had a maths quiz today too. It wasn't too bad - at least I wrote something down for each question.

The ENGG1804 tutorial ended quite unexpectedly halfway through. Most of the others were probably glad to have that hour to themselves, but for me it meant that I had to rush back to the other side of the campus for my linguistics lecture. Of course, I was glad to go to the linguistics lecture. Really, Mondays aren't so bad if I actually get to go to my linguistics lecture. It really makes my day.

For that hour of free time that I did have after the lecture, I sat around with the friend that I met on WebCT. She has so many friends! Her friends were doing their assignments at the last moment... Sheesh. If there's one subject for which I don't leave the assignments till the last moment, it's linguistics. See, total subject favouritism.

After that, I went to the ENGG1804 lecture, and the half of the class that were there waited for about half an hour, and neither of the lecturers turned up. They could've told us.

Then again, I'm glad to go home early.

I managed to ride my bike all the way home from the university! I started at 9:10 and got home at 10:15 (I was riding on the path and not on the road, so that's why it took so long.), so it doesn't really take that much longer than going home by train. That is, riding from the university to the train station, waiting for the train, and then going home on the train will add up to almost as long, even though the train journey is only about 20 minutes.

Normally, I would be in a linguistics tutorial at this time on a Friday, but I went on Wednesday so I don't have to go again today. The only class I had today was a differential calculus lecture. We were looking at functions of two variables, and when looking at functions, of course we look at graphs. Somehow, someone started picking on how the lecturer pronounces "graph". He says [gɹaf], and some people in the class say [gɹæf]. (I wonder if anyone else in there did linguistics. May be I should've took the chance to ask. xD) He also accidentally said "spear" instead of "sphere" a few times, and I joked that "hemisphere" becomes "hammer spear" when he said it. It's fun sitting at the front. See, maths first thing in the morning isn't really that cruel. It was also funny when the lecturer put the computer-generated 3-D graphs on the screen. One of them had two bumps sticking up, and everyone laughed at it. xD