Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Oh, well. Worth a shot. I'll go backwards because it's more convenient that way.

Today, I'm waiting to see if anything comes up in the evening, however incredibly unlikely that might be. I *should* make my way to school to send out my student pass copy and photo etc., but I'm just really too incredibly lazy. I could try and do it at home, I know somebody's got a scanner somewhere, but I have no idea how hard it'll be. Let's see. I'd go in two shakes, except that my bike (Rocinante; the name has stuck enough that it's got it's own tag on Flickr now) is out of service; that happened yesterday, but I'll get to that once I get that far. I mopped out the kitchen, too, and didn't screw it up _too_ badly imho. Apart from that, usual day ... woke up late (8am), had breakfast by myself (ham+cheese+mushroom omlette), lunch with the guys (omlette fried rice), and have been pottering around the internet most of today. It's been a completely unproductive but nice day; of course, all I need to do is to get Eccl working, and I'll be happy and satisfied ... and even if that doesn't happen, ah well, it's a day for rest and all that. Had a nice chat with Amruta too, so a good day thus far, however the rest turns out.

Yesterday, I went off to see Sue the T. rex; it was fun, the bicycling more so than the dinosaur. I left home around 4:30 or so, got there at 5:10 (5 minutes before they closed admissions!). This first thing I saw was this bugger, which was great - Sue and Stan (the two T. rexes) was much bigger, but they were big enough that it was ... surreal. Like looking at a sculpture? To make things worst, Sue was up against the wall. Atleast with Stan, you could walk around him and appreciate the sheer scale of him somewhat. But the Tarbosaurus was perfect: about twelve feet or so high, he was big enough for you to go "woah", but small enough for you to know what's going on.

The show closed at 6:00, so I figured I'd head off towards Jurong Lake, because I'd liked it, and maybe the Chinese Gardens. CG was a no-go, because you couldn't take your bicycle in, but Jurong - and the lake - was BRILLIANT. Nice and green, places where you could wander off into; and just be by yourself. 6:42 (really!) found me eating choco chip ice cream sandwitched in bread, listening to a bunch playing away quite badly (but with great energy!), watching the world cycle, rollerblade, walk, and even go by on wheelchair. Brilliant stuff - so cool, nice, fun, everybody running around and having fun, and me with nothing to think about or worry about or on my mind. Brilliant stuff.

I had a durian ice cream next. Gosh, is that flavor strong. It was the last durian-flavoured one in the box. The guy selling it said it was a "lucky" one. Who knows?

The sunset was spectacular as usual, and I retired to the foot court opposite Lakeside for a fantastic nasi goreng and sugar-cane-with-lime. Lovely.

Within minutes, things went downhill. I abruptly realised that I couldn't stop Rocinante at all! Turns out the rear brake had taken a turn for the worst; with an already disfunctional front, that means my bike is basically unstoppable now. No fun, particularly as all that exercise was finally seeming to make a different :|. Cycling back was *crazy*. Nothing really bad happened on Commonwealth Ave West (praise FSM!), but the whole way back via Jalan Lempeng was NUTS. I kept coming down slopes, trying to stop myself with my feet, failing miserably, then basically crashing my bike into conveniently placed trees. Just as I came off Faber Drive onto the slope down onto the Ulu Pandan bike path, a football bounces off a wall and comes slowly towards me; I'm not particularly worried about the ball (it's way too big to get anywhere bad, like in between my wheels), but the kid - either because of my expression or heaven knows what - is shouting apologies at me (and eventually a cheery "bye bye!"). My expression is pretty worried, 'cos that's quite a slope. Made it back okay, but I do NOT trust myself to go anywhere until I get my bike fixed. Hopefully, I'll handle the submission etc. tonight, so I don't have to worry about getting into school late tomorrow. Or just be lazy now and hope I wake up in time ...

The week's been okay to good from a programming perspective; it took me ages to get 'into the mood', and I was getting pretty stressed out with Prof about it; luckily, I managed to use it semi-productively: with the new build.xml, javadocs, and - hopefully - with Eccl 1.0 (when will it be done?! It's seven already, and I plan to be in bed after dinner, which will be within half an hour ... so how so how?!) things will be better and more efficient than ever. And sometime around Thursday or Friday, the codewriting began kicking into gear too, which was fun :).

At the same time, I was hanging out with lab mates more, which is always fun. Nothing specific, just ... in the general, which is sometimes the most fun of ways.

Next week's challenges: balance lab work with Fd; get Eccl out the door, and working beautifully; and get the Randomizer working great. A tall order, but that's what all those days are for, eh?

It's been a great week, though. What a great life! Happy, happy, happy.

This post was posted by Unknown at 7:13 pm