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Ben's 21st - 18:53 GMT November 17, 2006

First, Nigel, then Fu Wing, then Derek Ho, then now Ben. Four birthdays within the space of two weeks, of which I only attended to three of them(the only person whom I could not make it to his birthday would be obviously Mr Ho as it is not feasible unless I am mentally unstable or something...), not bad I suppose. Nothing much of great importance had happened over the space of a few days within my absence of updating this site. Now where was I, right, Ben's 21st birthday.

Before I go on, may I just say that I never knew that people here would associate their 21st celebrations with heavy drinking. Well, for Nigel at least, if that is what it takes to qualify as heavy drinking. In Malaysia, people tend not to celebrate their 21st with drinking at all. The logic behind it however, is rather simple: Alcohol is reasonably expensive back there, and not many people can afford it.

Anyway, back to the main point, which is Ben's 21st. I never had lectures yesterday because the professor was ill, so I never turned up at the university campus in the morning. Ben had his celebrations beginning from 6pm, meaning that I only needed to travel to the train station from my house from 4.45pm onwards. I was late by twenty minutes, but that never seemed to bother Ben or anyone for that matter.

Upon approaching Waterfront, it felt like a mirror image of Fu Wing's birthday which was not too long ago, with all the drinks on the table, but with a significant difference, which is that not many students were there this time round. Not a surprise since there is class the following day(today), therefore the turnout is not as high.

Anyway, Ben's friends bought him quite a number of drinks, and we know what is going to happen next. Ben got himself drunk, but thankfully nowhere as bad compared to Nigel or Fu Wing. He had water and sobered himself up later on.

Ben enjoying himself

We then had supper and then broke off. Ben was fine then, but I can never tell what happened to him later that night.
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A new chapter begins... - 13:10 GMT November 13, 2006

... of course, I was referring to my new version of my website being published. It has been long overdue, because I have been planning to publish it two months ago, but seeing that I have constraints, such as projects and university to deal with, that plan never turned into fruition.

Nonetheless, now that I have got this up and running, some of you will then realise why this site has been password protected for a short while. Let me then continue my story of what happened within the two months between my last update and now...

So, university started over a month now. Me returning to the Strand usually is an instance of deja vu, but not this year. The place has been refurbished, as the student union bar has been completely transformed now. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of the new bar, but I doubt that would matter to most of you who are reading this anyway. It is not just the bar, but also some parts of the building, including a new lecture theatre, of which I attend classes to. The changes have been great, but again, not much changes happened to my department, or shall I say no changes at all.

This year, we have to select our own modules, meaning that some of us will inevitably split paths as we specialise in our own fields of discipline. So now, instead of having over quite a number of classmates in a class, I only have a handful around me this time. Not that it matters a lot to me, but just to show you the difference time makes as we go through our lives.

Like I mentioned, one of my classes is being held in a new lecture theatre. It is great, because everything is new, and it does not look as bad as some of those basement classrooms. The best thing with it is that one can get away by sleeping during the class in that room, but such an action is not condoned by me of course!

So, what else, oh, Nigel's 21st birthday party. It was a party planned by us for him, and it did not go so well, due to excessive drinking by Nigel. I had a pint of beer that night, but drinking that liquid gold was just about it for me really. Nigel had to down fifteen or more tequila shots, and he did that exactly under fifteen minutes. One can only imagine how he did that, but I witnessed it all. He did it, and still managed to show a defiant victory pose after that.

What happened next was ugly, because we went to the restaurant, and Nigel never really showed signs of throwing up at any point till then. Of course, he finally threw up, and we panicked as he never really recovered that night. Luckily there was an ambulance that came to his aid, and since then he recovered.

It was a lesson learnt, which is not to let your friends get so drunk as it has dire consequences. At least Fu Wing's birthday was not as bad, but it was probably because of lessons being learnt off Nigel's birthday.

That is all, I will get more photos up on the photo album.
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September update - 23:32 BST September 11, 2006

Yeah I know I have not been updating as much as I would like nowadays. Nothing much to report over the past month really, filled with work and work.

Tuesday the 5th was Kiet's farewell party. We basically gathered at London to have some fun. Kiet was initially playing pool, we later then went for an Italian dinner, which was pretty decent. After that, we wanted to go drinking, and so we did, but Nigel got kicked out for not having a "valid" proof of age, which is pretty unfortunate because all the while we have been able to get into the bar without much problems. Because of that, we went to a pub instead, where the staff there was much more sensible by accepting our university student cards as proof of age. I had a short DS(Yes, I have just got one of those for myself recently) gaming session there before heading back home. It was quite tiring but fun.

Friday the 8th, I went to Gaurav's 21st birthday party at his house, and oh my word his house is REALLY big. For English standards anyway. The birthday boy had some torches(whatever you call that) lit on his garden, and he nearly burnt himself by one of those! There were a lot of people who went to his house, but seeing as his house is so massive, cramming them was not a problem.

Gaurav's wish to get a bottle of Jack Daniel's came too true as he received fifteen bottles of them. I wonder how he is going to finish them...

I left with my brother, Peter, Richard and Nigel. We stayed overnight at Peter's newly rented accommodation, which was pretty cosy. I saw Peter's new desktop too, and it looks nice with those(expensive) speakers on the side of the flatscreen monitor.

Today, I met up with an old friend of mine, Aravind. If I am not mistaken, we have not seen each other for almost, if not two years. It was good to see him again. I and my brother had a good chat as he came over to my house and then we went over to his new house, which has got a nice pond at the garden, just like Gaurav's house. There were cats at the garden too, which were left there by the previous house owner, due to reasons of "the cats will be traumatised if they were brought along to a new environment". Right...

We then went to watch "Cars", which was not bad at all. It was also probably the only watchable film in cinemas at the time of this writing anyway. My only criticism with that film is that the plot seems to be like a cliche to me.

After that, we went back to Aravind's house and had another chat, and I was telling him stories like how students could not do simultaneous equations involving only two variables at university level, and the student is actually studying something that is mathematically related. Yeah, if you are wondering, we do find that amusing. We also had the usual football club dissing against each other.

That is all. Hell(i.e. University) begins at the end of this month, which is something that I definitely do NOT want to look forward to.
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Updates, updates, updates!!!!!!!!! - 23:35 BST August 11, 2006

Oh dear, it has been a month since I last wrote anything. Indeed there has been a few things of interest that happened, but just that I did not find a suitable time to write them.

So, here is what happened over the past few weeks, barring the usual sports(Badminton and football come into mind) sessions:

I went to the British Motorshow at somewhere in London with Fu Wing and a few of his friends two weeks ago. Not a bad day's out for six quid, because not only we get to drool over the usual Ferraris and Aston Martins, but we get free drinks, so it is worth it. There was also a Mazda Challenge section, where you get to drive either a RX-8 or an MX-5 around a short circuit for free, but I did not want to go because I definitely did not want to crash the cars there having not driven for ages. For your information, my foot tends to get itchy on the accelerator pedal when the road is clear, especially with this circuit, things could even get worse had I gone for it.

Four days after the car show, I went out with my Department of Computer Science friends to watch Superman at iMax, which featured selected 3D scenes. Overall, I thought that the film was average, but Lap thought it was excellent. We then gathered up at Chinatown to play a bit of pool before heading to dinner. The madness then began...

We went to Lloyd's to have a drink. We kept drinking for three hours. I think I have smashed my previous drinking record with about ten glasses of alcohol or so. That may not be a lot to most of the people out there, but it is definitely enough for me. I actually got a bit dizzy towards the end, but thankfully I managed to regain balance of myself and nothing really happened the day after.

The week after that, we went to Chinatown to have dinner and then went to Lloyd's, but this time with much less people. I just felt that it was deja vu, but not quite. This time, we had much less drinks, so the effects were not severe at all...

So, onto today and beyond. I am busy with some freelance work as it stands, and it does take time to do something, but thankfully I do everything at my own discretion.

That is all for now. I will try to get updates in more frequently as my workload decreases.
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July update after I seemingly disappeared - 11:47 BST July 10, 2006

More than three weeks have passed since the last update! I have been quite busy dealing with some website for a magazine, and I am still busy working on it as of now.

Nothing much of real interest happened over past weeks. I went to a few football sessions, which was about it. I was drenched during one of the sessions due to heavy rain.

And of course, three days ago was a year on after the atrocities. I was shocked when I first heard of the news last year. Terrorists will never win.

Onto the livelier news, Italy won the World Cup. I never expected an Italy-France final to be honest, but it was quite a good game as both teams really went for it. The only thing that surprised me(and many others, I am sure) was Zidane's actions during second half of extra time. What was he thinking? Regardless of what insult he received, that was a really stupid thing to do given the circumstances of the match and how much there was at stake. What a way to end your international career in football.

And of course, Wimbledon. Federer showed the world why he is still the king on grass courts. The match was as exciting to watch as badminton finals.

Last Saturday I gave one of my old friends a call, seeing we have not spoken for five months. Actually, I was supposed to call another old friend of mine and try to solve his computer problems, but since I could not contact him, I contacted this other guy instead. When he heard my voice, he thought I have arrived in Penang. But it was not to be as I told him I am not going back this year. We had some conversation primarily dominated by the World Cup after the usual "How is everything going" introduction. Do not worry my friend, your 'boss' will be back some time later.... hehehe.

That is it. My apologies again for the lack of updates, but I am really busy.
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