Been good?

The presentation of some of my findings regarding the A2 Advances in Physics paper to Mr Stell went fine. He seemed to be impressed by the breadth and intricacy of my research methods and conclusions. I will have to do a bit more and then present it to the students after their Easter break. However I must say that this is at most like firing an alpha particle through a gold foil... you are probably never gonna beat the examiners! But then again you could always be adequately prepared for the exams, and this is one of the ways. The computer scientists would call it data mining!

Will be looking at a hectic holiday schedule (starting next week) where things will start taking shape: Final Year Project report, Secondary Education Report, DSP as well as the Environmental assignment, and the job applications. As they say, a final push. Oh, did I mention I have to do some solid revision into the much-hated topic of matrices for State Variable Control?

For now, still applying to deadlines, not proactive enough. When will I ever learn?

I've been tempted to buy a new badminton racket recently, just for fun... could be a present for myself too....

伦敦

Dear all,

Well I am off to London for the Malaysia Careers Fair at UCL... and 顺便 will do some shopping@Piccadilly Circus. I will also be having dinner at Four Seasons, one of the most highly-recommended duck-serving restaurants in London. I had the "honour" of eating there last time but I must agree it was quite a good experience. Their ducks are mou "duck" ding!!! <== part of a longstanding personal joke =P

My body is aching right now cos I stayed off badminton for almost 2 weeks (hell of a long time I tell you) and was completely worked up on Thurs. I had a "smashing good time"* and really did smash quite well. I found that my court-travelling has been getting better, going from left to right at the back court. Playing mixed against 2 guys, we still managed 13 each set (still the old format). And the clincher came later: after playing a total of 6 sets, I took on Roger again for some singles and came out 15-8 winner. After losing the next set 13-15, we each had a 21-point game with Shuwen, interspersed with me winning a spectacular game 15-12, clawing my way back from 2-11 down (hehe! I was lazy), with 7 straight points...before going for one more set at the end which I lost (12). So I think I am in good shape and probably I can be in top form by not playing so much badminton??!

Easter holidays are round the corner so there will be a bit more time to indulge in stuff like this, plus many others....

And my project is almost done, short of the extra modifications and the formal report-writing. My supervisor has been quite happy with my program since everything works to the agreed specifications. Hopefully I can explain the algorithm of his sync program properly when the time comes. Perhaps the wavelet transform can help???

Okay, 4 and a half hours left to boarding the coach (6.05am!). I shall pack my bags, grab my suit and catch 38 winks!!

Sekian, terima kasih.

* the quote on the Badminton Club t-shirt I designed last year

Commonwealth Gold!

Just a quick update...
I spent two and a half hours watching the Commonwealth Games Team Finals of the badminton event where Malaysia beat England 3-1 to win their first-ever gold medal in the series. This was mainly because the girls were neglected and that meant that the ladies' singles, doubles and mixed doubles matches were often lost. Not this time though. Yap Kim Hock has now followed through on the work laid out by Morten Frost Hansen and Park Joo Bong to ensure that the female players were looked after, and this has resulted in Wong Mew Choo grinding out the results in a gruelling 27-25, 20-22, 21-18 win over Tracey Hallam. Well it does look like the new scoring format in badminton takes it to a higher level in terms of speed, but I still prefer the luxury of the spectacular recovery offered by the old system of holding serve before winning a point.
Back to the match, Wong Choon Hann, singles winner at the '98 CG in Kuala Lumpur, headed out first not as first singles, a positino he has been familiar with for many years for Malaysia, but as mixed doubles. He used to play doubles before becoming a singles specialist and, as age (and Lee Chong Wei) catches up with him , he has increasingly become the utility man in the Malaysian team. This is the first time he is playing in all 3 individual events that a man can play in any tournament, and he will be partnering Choong Tan Fook in the mends doubles and Ooi Sock Ai in the mixed (meeting Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms again in the 1st match later on). I was impressed by his ability to recover at speed despite being smashed by the powerful Robertson today, especially one right across himself, at his backhand corner, which he flicked back cross-court into the centre. He had no right to return that shot from such a low point..
Then Lee Chong Wei whitewashed Aamir Ghaffar 21-8, 21-8, while we went 2-1 up after Wong Mew Choo's exertions. The final game was taken in straight sets by Chan Chong Ming-Koo Kien Kiet against a technically accomplished Anthony Clark-Robert Blair, who were just that bit less dominating in every rally and in the end came out second best. The Malaysian pair played a more techinically superior game and also had a very strong defence which kept the British smashes at bay. Add that to Chong Ming's knack of irritating the opponents by serving once they looked to be ready, perhaps a tad too early actually, and I think it did succeed in winding their opponents up a little! Koo Kien Kiet is a revelation. He might be around my age, but his movement was absolutely amazing. I missed watching him at the All England in January due to him being down with some illness, but this was a superb performance. He was totally dominant moving forward and his smashes were exquisite.
Let's just hope the golds continue in the individuals, with Lee Chong Wei poised to meet Wong Choon Hann in the mens singles final and the mens doubles pair being the favourites.

swan lake, steam boat!

All right, so I haven't been updating for a while. So much so that Shiyun has managed to set up her new blog and Barcelona have knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League (yeeee-ah!). I watched that on tv, and I will use the word "outplayed".

There have been major progress on two important aspects of mine: project and special project. The affectionately-known FYP is still WIP*, but not yet RIP... However I have been able to implement the buttons correctly and everything works, up till now, except the "save" button which I have not fully configured and which otherwise saves gibberish into my _out file.

Special Project at Guthlaxton is still ongoing, but I reaped some concrete preparation documents from Mr Stell today when he provided me with some past exam papers for Physics A2 and commented on the difficulty that students find in doing Section B of the Advances in Physics paper. So my project is more or less set, to identify a few areas to work on, specifically in Year 13 Physics, with respect to that section on that paper, and also to present a talk on university routes in science & engineering to Year 12 students. All in a day's work.

I caught Swan Lake with Deng Hui on Sunday at DMH. This one was performed by the Russian Chisinau Ballet (if I have remembered corectly), and was not as spectacular as I had thought. The story wasn't that fascinating (from what I saw, having not read the synopsis), and the starting half was rather dull in shades of white. After the long intermission though, the dancers sprung to life and, in a sustained stretch, pulled off a few solid performances with a very colourful costume to boot! And then the scenery changed again, back to shades of white... this reminds me, although entirely separate from this topic, of the feedback board I worked on at NJC which was called 'Shades of Grey'--ok, not a very imaginative name, to say the least, but we didn't think of any other far-flung name either. After the dinner we went to have a birthday dinnes at Red Lantern with some of Hui's friends, where I gave her The Masterpiece**.

Steamboat arranged for Saturday as part of Deng Hui's continuing Birthday Week celebrations, where I will be looking at having some nice pork balls, tofu, prawns etc etc. I will also probably be experimenting in bubble-tea***-making!

*work in progress!
** The Masterpiece: a nice yellow, strapped top with a strapped, white inner padding... and this had a picture transferred on it.. of us, in front of York Castle, in the snow. Dec '05.
***奶茶

getting focussed

I had been doing some intensive work the past 3 days helping Tracy get her English and logic right in her Pharmaceutical Chemistry project report.... now I am an expert in protection!* And somemore I found that she had miscalculated her yields...

Now I shall be turning my energies on my own little project to finish writing up the basic M-file for running the GUI properly. Then I shall save it and start working on improvements to this initial crude version.

And of course start writing up the applications and looking at assignments (I said this last week), as well as starting proper planning on my Guthlaxton project!

The International Student Association held its annual International Cultural Night on Saturday but it turned out to be a farce. Most of the presentations were not really entertaining, plus there were repetitions of performers here and there. Food-wise it was a poor selection too (I bet Malaysian Soc made some money cos there wasn't much to choose from anyway!), not that the tomato rice and chicken was not nice. The onde onde was great, and I also got a taste of banana cake, one which I never expected to have in the UK. The worst Cultural Night he has ever seen, according to someone who has been around in Leicester for a while. Makes me wonder if my 3 pounds could have gone to 18 onde onde's instead....

* Not that protection, polyprotection by alpha-diketones for hydroxyl groups, specifically the hydroxyl group protection offered by butane-2,3-dione in D-mannitol & meso-erythritol

some points abt my badminton

I realised I have a new movement in badminton that makes me even faster in shot retrieval... I used the forward skip to good effect today but my stroke was lacking... the flick of the wrist not held well till the last moment, the step up, the racket stance not disguised well enough to place the shuttle to where only I would know it would go...

But overall it was another good series of matches with Roger and Terence. Terence though was out of depth today and had a lot of mistakes. I made lots too but they were not so bad. There were also a couple of smashes I had which were more Lin Dan-like, right down the line, to the inner back line. I also had a few tight forehand and backhand returns on Roger's smashes. I had thought that after the sick episode almost 2 weeks ago I would have lost some firepower, but the hiatus probably did me good and my body had some time to fallow.... now I feel like I can move well. Now to ensure the backhand clears are good, and to work on my smashes. The overhead cross-court is fine, but I need better cross-court and down-the-line shots. Shubei noted in Belgium that my drops were quite good -most of the time, I'd say-...

I also had an ultra-long rally with Roger, reminiscent of the Lin Dan-Lee Chong Wei semifinal at the All-England. Our shots were all technically well-placed, and retrieval quick and good. A pity that finally I made a mistake with the inadequate lift on my backhand forecourt and Rog managed to come in and smash.

short one!

Interesting pictures of fruits here: http://www.8b8d.com/na3/memo.php?bd=CollectPic&&no=4988&re=0

Made a breakthrough in project, finally being able to properly pass data to and from subsidiary files from my main GUI function. Lots of stupid mistakes. "Elementary, my dear Watson."

Start thinking about how to implement my Special Project at Guthlaxton and also Environmental module's assignment topic.......