..:: 727. Awesome Book Shopping ::..

despite the gloomest sunday albeit the nice-good-to-sleep weather, i figured sleeping alone is not all fun

my first thought was: i should go to work.

insane! but the gym beside my work place is the real reason for me to drag my ass to work. was on 2-day MC and i had spent the whole of friday replying emails. whoever set our iso objectives to deliver efficient hr services. that includes replying emails on time cos we do get complains that we never reply emails.

now i understand why going to work can be fun. it is not the process of going to work definitely, but the thrill you get when u are able to clear your workload. i finally completed my minutes for meeting which were long overdue. went back office on a monday feeling really good cos i have cleared my work! according to the happiness project by gretchen rubin, i have achieved my happiness dosage with that few hours spent.

borders sale. book shopping just popped up in my mind. for such educational retail therapy i have only a few friends to turn to. after i asked some of my friends, i got replies like,

"har... i dont read books one"
"what is there to buy?"

ahem. books? feeling sad that my frens dont read, or rather dont share the joy of reading. i knew my travel bud (is this the new term?) would agree in a blink of an eye and i was right! i guess her affair was not messy on sunday so she got time to entertain me :X

from my travel bud:

"Travel bud, meanwhile, must be the most finicky book chooser. He whose main considerations when purchasing a title are: size, weight, typefont, mustbeabove20dollars, nonfictionthenicanlearnsomething. Uhm, okay man."

to set the context right, i am concerned about weight cos i am already lugging a huge heavy bag and my reading companion has to be as light as possible. must be 20 dollars and above to be eligible for the discount. i am quite practical, read things to learn things that i can apply almost immediately. maybe i will read fiction when i am older, with more time to think :X and yash, funny comment but you made me sound like a himbo!

..:: 711. Celebration ::..




this feeling is like a reminiscence of the time when our team won 2nd in the capitaland marketing award.

i guess praying to the 4-faced buddha in bangkok helps :P

had my first revision yesterday night after a month break and my instructor actually told me i was not ready. every mistake i made, he was like "4 points", "2 points", "fail already like that". hur. how encouraging.

luckily i have my second revision in the morning just before the test. it was my first ever female instructor. though most people prefer male instructors but i thought having a female one would be good as they are known for being meticulous or in some case fussy. always had problems with vertical parking and she gave me good tips by using these really cool cards that can have movable poles to show me about the sighting and turning points. she also gave me sweets and asked me to chew on those when i am nervous. so sweet right?

warm-up session was kinda peaceful. the young chap didnt have any comments. feeling jittery, i kept rehearsing the circuit moves while waiting for my instructor. was the last few to be called and when i heard i got test route 4, i was excited - cos no u-turn to do.

started off with the circuit which he gave me lots of instructions to cut through lanes, turn here and there so as to finish all the circuit requirements. lots of signaling and checking safe to do. circuit was rather smooth and soon i headed for the road.

traffic was quite smooth. i was lucky to go to bukit batok side and not bukit panjang/teck whye where the traffic is building up. didnt get to do the emergency brake and he got me to park the car. didnt say a word. i was worried, thinking that i might have gotten immediate failure.

waited anxiously in the room while i saw a few instructors having debrief with their candidates. i was quite amazed that all the girls that took the test passed. then my instructor came with the result.

"good, you passed..." the rest didnt register in my mind.

..:: 637. The One With Happy Moments ::..

ok shall blog about happy moments. i guess there is still a collectivist part of me where guilt is killing me! arghz.

decided to write this jiayi-inspired entry summing up my 3 years in NBS.

actually my uni life started with joining the sports club which was the right choice for an explosive start to school. everyone was so "on" and crazy. our group was not the strongest physically but we have smart people in our team so we won quite a lot of challenges. one of the more memorable ones was coming in 4th out of 16 teams in the 2-day amazing race. i could still remember some of the stations that we had:

1. kbox at cck lot one where the clue was an indian word that translated to cck.
2. tiong bahru market to finish one basin of rice! we apparently lost to a group of big eaters
3. kallang to do dragonboat and the clue was sign language. difficult!
4. bedok interchange food center... had to link words to buy different types of food
5. pit stop: pasir ris park and we slept over in tents.

the next morning:
1. east coast park to try the 360ski
2. west coast recreation centre to play bowling and forfeit to drink some weird stuff based on the no. of pins missed
3. qian hu fishing farm. drew lots to see how many different colour small fishes we had to catch. it was so difficult. needed a lot of patience.

the next most fun activity was the night trail at the old changi general hospital. i must applaud the acting skills of the seniors and the prop set up. all the calefare acted as wondering ghosts really gave us the chills and screams. still remembered one of the guys freaked out and ran out of the room. that was how scary.

the camp was also a platform for me to join the organising committee of surf and sweat which was a major national event that ntu sports club organises. learnt a lot from there and i had the honour of doing the explanation of the whole rundown of the event to all the participants despite having to do it for like at least 50 times.

Year 1 Sem 1

AB105 - Organizational Behavior & Design

it was quite amazing how the group was formed. random. started off with me and my marketing grp mate jiayi, then came a few other girls and then crappy guoxiang. there was some adjustment initially cos one group had to dissolve. then came all the weird "name calling" by funny emails. i still remember how our project discussion would go off track and guoxiang will always bring us back. in our conversation, there will surely be ob concepts and terms used.

a very "spoil market" module cos every group was trying to "up" their standard every presentation. it was this module that polished our research skills. we already started to research extensively using the database and learning how to cite professionally. All these were not taught by a prof but a phd student. i mean she is amazing minus the fact that she had a weird habit of turling the ends of her hair. there was a lot of critical thinking and even our Q&A, we had to "argue" using what we have researched from journals to support as in her own words she dont want any "coffeeshop talk".

i still remember she was very proud of our class cos we were very driven and produced really good work which she sadly told us it was unfair to "bell-curve" us cos the three groups were generally better than some of the other classes. i was glad that we all met her expectations and still kept in contact with her.

AB112 - Marketing

Same classmates so you can expect the "spoil market" effect to spill over. the tutor was kinda weird as she wanted quality research and that translated to producing 100+ slides. The first group that got A+ presented banyan trees... but i enjoyed all of the presentations. trying to sell our products and services and also on case studies.

AB103 - Statistical and Quantitative methods

tough course cos i not very good in stats. not much group work and there were not interesting either. lucky got math genius in the group, so the group assignments were not that painful.

AB106 - Principles of Economics

Didnt take it in JC and it was quite a challenge to cramp 2 years plus worth of JC stuff into 3 months. plus the prof was intimidating... after you are asked to present your solutions, she will ask questions to test your knowledge and understanding of the concept. must do tutorial faithfully, cannot copy from others.

quite a long entry... shall break up different semesters into different entries for easier reading.

..:: 587. The One With SMRT Challenge ::..

Sat i had hrc orientation for the yr 2s. enjoyed myself. having to know quite a few yr 2s. sentosa sun didnt disappoint us. ibiza the tri-uni beach event was not as grand as i have expected. maybe i am comparing with surf sweat which opened up to the public. this was a smaller affair involving the 3 universities business school. not sure whether it is difficult to get pple from SIM to be in the committee thats why they were not included.

daniel ong was the MC and he was damn good. cracked us up with his 'dirty' jokes. all the banana, nutella...

Sun exciting day for me and my team mates. woke up damn early to reach toa payoh hub at 8am. donned on the number tag, went to take a grp pic and we began to solve codes to lead us to the next station. we managed to solve that we will be travelling from khatib to bukit batok.

when the whistle went off, it was a mad dash to the train station. some fell as the floor was slippery. lol. comical sight, wanna snap pics but no time.

at khatib, everyone just ran towards the table to grab the clue to solve for the next 3 stations. we were quite fast cos we formed ally with another team and we had to head to sembawang.

once we are out the station, everyone sprinted like never before to the bus interchange for a game. we cant run in the train station cos we will get demerit points. but all hell broke loose at the bus interchange. there was this parked bus where each time only 3 people can go up. they tied raffia strings to form obstacles and we were supposed to send one rep to go thru it and jot down the messages beside each safety item on the bus.

then next stop was to woodlands. once there we were supposed to locate safety signs in the platform and their messages. it was easy as we just see groups of people copying stuff on a pillar. we just followed.

then it was to kranji. we had to watch a video with footage from the mrt. our task was to spot 5 unsafe acts in the video. the challenging thing was we had 2 screens, each screen with 6 footage playing at the same time.

then we went to gombak and we had to do some fishing for some clues which was super UNchallenging.

the last station to go was actually by chance. we received hints that yew tee might be one but my fren went and said they could not find anything. so we tried bukit batok and cck to no avail. then we formulated a strategy. we managed to locate yishun and to our delight, they had a station. if yishun was not, we will be screwed cos that left us with yew tee which was 30 mins away.
we had to do some obstacle course and board a cab and tell the taxi driver the 3 safety rules when taking a cab. i wondered whether the driver understood what we were saying.

after yishun, we were excited to run back to toa payoh. however in the train we were thinking 'ok, i guess we shld be in top ten'. sad that we went to 2 wrong stations. at the finishing line, we saw one team in front of us at the counter. while waiting, one of the guy turned back and told me, 'hey u guys are second'.

my eyeballs enlarged. lol. what?

that got us excited for a few mins that we forgot to say 'smrt challenge'. we were so close though. we then went to collect our goodie bags and found that the first team was also from NTU. they were CAC camp mates while we were GIP mates.

the prize presentation was quite an agonizing wait. they gave out 10 prizes for the children art competitions which had 3 categories. but when it was our turn to go up, it felt great. taking the big styrofoam fake cheque was my first. now it is in my hall as deco item. we also received a small trophy. nice.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150280&id=763130230&ref=mf

..:: 564. The One With Ritz ::..

yea. most exciting thing happened was the stay at ritz carlton over the weekend and xmas. ironically, spent the first day rushing for HR challenge.



with my mates, kahyan and yash. plus jiayi who became our foreign correspondent in taiwan. haha.

we didnt sleep the whole night. took turns to take power naps while my friends' friends were playing card games, we were cramming our brains. lucky for me i dun have to go work on monday morning. i was rather knocked out... jiayi slept at 330 and woke up at 530 to join us with the battle and managed to edit and come up with executive summary before she joined her tour at 930...

friday went for red cross anniversary dinner. donated MAC lip gloss that i got from fashion week. sadly, it wasnt highly sought after. had fun during lucky draw where our table kept chanting 'capsules' as there were many boxes as prizes. we were hoping others will clear the capsules and leave the vouchers and grand prize for our table...

me with joan.



oh. me with my designer shirt.

caught 2 movies. i am legend during xmas eve. think i am old already... cant take that kind of thriller. maybe i just have a weak heart lol. a rip-off of resident evil and 28 days later.

then was national treasure: the book of secret. think it is more enjoyable than i am legend. comedy + action + romance... maybe a bit far fetched but still nice to watch.

it was nice staying in town area and up in shopping centres in the morning for breakfast. marina square was just 5 mins away and the view from the hotel was great. the hotel had a fire drill and after which the water supply was affected. no cold water for quite some time =( not very pleased with the housekeeping service. i called and when they came, one of them asked, 'what do you need?'

'eh, housekeeping?'

'which part?'

i was like, you know better than me right? why not you give me your trolley and i top up the stuff and change the towels myself?

then was a bad rush for dinner at kallang. due to the fire alarm, the lifts were not working so we had no access to the basement. until a janitor showed us another way through the 'staff-only' staircase. lol. all we got from the staff was asking us to wait patiently -_-

back to my GIP stuff. my fren flew my aeroplane :( now i am the only one out of my flatmates to go fudan university.

..:: 528. The One With CapitaLand Retail Marketing Award ::..

arh...arh...arh... (not enough to express my excitement!)

our team got 1st runner-up for the competition! the trophy looks really sleek and i have been praying so hard not to leave the place empty handed and yet we got a pleasant surprise by coming out top 3. nus consisted of yr 4 marketing students got 3rd. was watching this 'celebrity' huang shiyu - if you dunno him, he actually participated in star search, project superstar... his team ministry of xpression actually was about cosplay - people dressing up like anime characters... when they were presenting, our team resonated with the judges' comments about cosplay being a small target segment....

i guess other teams did not really link how the campaign can help increase sales which was important. raising awareness for the mall does not ensure people will spend money there. 1st place went to SMU. i must say their presentation style was quite sleek. their slides have one word or stick figures to explain.

anyway hope to upload the pic for my trophy.. =) and we got 800 dollars worth of voucher. now can spend it on capitaland mall ... what's best is actually being able to get connection to source for internship. I have just emailed the marcom executive of capitaland retail to link me up with capitaland retail china =)

i can clear my sleep debt with a smile tonight =)

..:: 527. The One With CapitaLand ::..

whee... happiest day after a shack week. our team Infinergy! got into the finals of the CapitaLand Retail Marketing Award =)

We were one of the top 5 teams out of the 102 teams that participated nationwide. Beside another NTU team, there were teams from NUS (yr 4 marketing), SMU (yr 3 Business Mgt) and another team from SP (yr 3 marketing mgt)...

we were the only non-marketing team. haha. 3 HR students doing marketing =) its the idea that counts.

at least we are guaranteed 300 bucks but we are looking for at least a 3rd placing. First prize is 1k and internship in China.

strangely mostly are girls...

our competitors:
school - Mall chosen - Campaign Name

NUS - Bugis Junction - "Ministry of Xpression"
SMU - Funan DigitaLife Mall - "We help you get IT"
SP - Bugis Junction - "Entering the New-Age Shopping"
NTU - Raffles City - "Your Smile is worth all our effort!"

and ours
NTU - Lot One - "Living Life @ Lot One"

*prays hard* we get the internship...

..:: 523. The One With GIP ::..

yeah... was having my 226 class - strategic hr and consulting when i received a sms from shannen far far away at student services centre telling me to check my mail :) i got selected for global immersion programme to china - going there at the end of the yr till aug, in time to catch the olympics :P envy eh

i had a crazy night - started to finish up my CapitaLand marketing award project from 10pm at kahyan's hall... the 3 of us worked all the way till 6am!!! with the 2 girls taking shift to concuss and poor me staying awake the whole night trying to finish the proposal.

But it was fun la. we were laughing as we did the project and kept ourselves awake. However as the clock approached 3am, our eyes seemed to cross and that's when all the caffaine started to wear out. I managed to cram out the executive summary at 8am before i went back to sleep.

Having to wake up 2 hours later for my class at 1030am was DISGUSTING. i thought i lost my eyeballs, cant even open my eyes. total CUI-ness, shack. plus it was my longest day... having class till 630pm :(

So now you know how appreciative when i receive shannen's sms.... i almost fell dead on the table. my first meal was at 4pm. had one hour break at 1230pm but was spent binding my proposal and handing up. then it was lessons all the way till 630pm.

anyway pix time... he used to be my instructor in red cross when i was a cadet... then in army he signed on just like me... now i took over him as treasurer. we look alike eh?



me with part of the 14th RCHN Management Committee...

surf sweat reunite! went for interview for surf & sweat 08 together