THE SAGA OF THE INTERNET BATTLE:

The internet battle was long and arduos. Armed with no prior skills to networking nor internet connection, our poor bronze knight was faced with a terrible fight that spelled death. He was forced countless times to battle Comcast techinicians on the phone for hours, tired and wounded at the end.

The spar started with a scheduled peacemaking ceremony at a certain time. The diplomat from the warring internet country was LATE! The bronze knight had to battle the Comcast technician on the phone and finally, the diplomat arrived. To our hero's horror, he had not skills in diplomacy (or should i say wireless routers). the two settled a peaceful agreement on the modem and the diplomat left. To our hero's horror, one hour after the diplomat left, the internet surprised him with a disconnected/limited connection war!!

Three days later, the bronze knight battled once again with the Comcast technician, who was actually a very nice knight himself. In the end, our hero got rid of the wireless routed and connected directly to the modem, thus ending the problem for the meantime. HOWEVER, the internet proved to be trouble again. Everytime our hero tried to connect, he could not! He had to go through the trouble of murdering the modem, praying for it, and reviving it with a miracle pill before the internet would be at ease again. OH! WHAT A TROUBLE!

So, the bronze knight once again battles with a different comcast technician, who said he would send another diplomat over. The bronze knight was happy. On that day, the bronze knight waited. and waited. and waited. The diplomat was 2 hours late! He battled again with a comcast technician, who told him that they had gotten the time wrong and that the diplomat had arrived earlier that morning and there was no one at home (because our hero was out in the knights' academy) Seething, the bronze knight raised his spear and demanded the Comcast technician to schedule another peaceful agreement. It was set to today, from 9-11AM.

The Bronze Knight awoke early today. He waited patiently for the diplomat. Time passed by. 10..11..12...1... Our hero was losing his temper. He battled again with a Comcast technician, who made him hang on the line for 13 mins before finally telling him "I shall ask my comrade about it." After a long wait, the bronze knight received a message saying, "The diplomat shall arrive at about 2.30 -3.00 PM" Our hero wept.

The diplomat arrived at 3.15PM. The bronze knight jumped in joy even though he was 4 hours late. He knew about the wireless, but only connected it physically. The bronze knight had to finish off the rest of the battle himself. Happily, the bronze knight waved the diplomat on his way. The battle was almost over!! Calming his beating heart, the bronze knight prepared for his finaly battle to configure the wireless router. BUT NOOOOo

The INTERNET sends a whole wave of its evil minions again and our hero was cut off from the internet!! Frustrated, our hero tries every means from killing the modem, to killing the router to reviving them countless times and resetting their brains. After a couple of failed attempts, the bronze knight tried dejectedly one last time... CONNECTED. Carefully, our hero plans a detailed plan to vanquish the enemy once and for all. He carefully researched pre-researched strategies and was about to put a password to secure the wireless connection. BUT nooo, the key was invalid. Our hero screamed in agony and the internet sent him a shock wave of terror. He carefully sought the advice of other knights all over the world fighting a battle and realized the password key had to contain certain letters. Inputting the key, it WORKED!

The Bronze knight jumped in joy. But he had one last thing to do... reboot the router. It could go both ways... that the internet raise another battle and refuse to connect him. Or... it could go well. Closing his eyes, the bronze knight pulled the plug....

The battle was over. Our hero sighed. He rode over to his home base and clicked on the wireless network and input the password. Everything was over.

THE END.
*diplomat: Comcast technicians who come to the house
*battle: phone calls to comcast technicians
*murder and revive: unplug and plug
*peacemaking ceremony: comcast technicans coming to the house to fix the internet problem

English class is starting to become unnerving. It's a 2 hours 5 minutes class, it starts at 8.15am in the morning. Why can't the professor see that?

He starts off class with some grammar teaching. They're like those really simple grammar on putting commas and sometimes past tenses or whatever stuffs people learnt in elementary school. Then he goes on to talk about the books. Basically, we just sit on our chairs for 2 hours 5 minutes listening to him talk all the way. There isn't a single break. and we NEVER have any discussions except when we bring in our drafts (which is like twice for the whole semester) And he doesn't engage us in any discussions either, mostly he just do the talking, sometimes a few students feel obliged to say somethign and they do. Otherwise... everyone just sits down, nodding off for the next 2 hours or so. It's painful, really painful.

I mean, give us a break. Or maybe have some sort of discussion. Hearing him talk for 2 hours is waaay too much. I get out of class with my nose runny because of the number of times I've yawned in the class. Sheesh.

Film class. ROCKS. We finished the rest of Pirates of the Carribean today. was supposed to watch it yesterday but the DVD was rotten. So we watched the 2nd part today, + the first part of Donnie Brasco. Johnny Depp Marathon.. wahaha.. Having a pre-midterm tomorrow, which I think would be a breeze because he's making it so easy. And watching 2nd part of Donnie Brasco too. Ain't it fun? A class where you do nothing but sit and watch movie, and he even lets us bring in CHIPS CANDIES DRINKS etc. So during the movies, we're like munching away happily. It's like, we have a good time, free movies, and we get credits for attending class. ain't that great or what?

Gonna do my English essay now. At least it's not difficult...

Just came back from the beach. Wah.. tired. It was pretty nice because the mountains were in the backdrop and the sea were in the foreground. You shan you hai. haha...

We played Ultimate Frisbee. haha... pretty fun. And the two guys in my team were like superb. I never really played Frisbee before, so hehe... but yeah, pretty fun.

The sea water was ice cold!! When I let the waves wash over my feet, i was like brr, cos the cold really cuts. But I stayed there for some time and got my pants all wet.

Berkeley is nice and cold. Sigh, kinda dread going back to Pleasant Hill actually. It's like sauna. It's so so hot and dry. My hands are always flaking and the heat is unbearable. The thing is, it's so dry that sweating is not quite possible. So your body retains the heat and you become even hotter. It drives me nuts because the only solution is to keep showering with cold water and putting a whole lot of moisturizers before you shrivel up. The wind in Pleasant Hill is like the Sahara-type --- Hot and suffocating. The wind in Berkeley is nice and sometimes a tad bit cold. They're just a half hour drive from each other, but the weather is so vastly different.

Ack! Haven't done my English essay. Guess what? it's only TWO pages. Like WOW man, TWO!!! you know my previous class, we had to do a minimum of FIVE freaking pages!! TWO pages... woohoo!!

GAH! The internet guy came yesterday. He was an hour late from the 3-5 appointment. He got the internet fixed up. and I was hoping he could fix up the wireless router as well, but he said he only knows modem and nothing about wireless.

So i was like ... I know nothing about computers. Anyway, tried to get the wireless router working. There was no manual guide that came with the router cos my housemate just brought it from Hong Kong just like that. I was wondering how I would get it to work with no manual guide. Sigh. Anyways, stayed there for like 3 hours trying to figure out everything. Got all fed up and stuffs.

Anyways, I checked the net on how to do it. Says I got to go to the address stated on the manual guide of the router, i was like WHERE? In the end, somehow my main internet stopped working. Everytime I connect, it's like limited or no connectivity. Like BLAST IT!

I'm at my sister's place now, so I can't work it on. But I'm gonna go back and figure it out again. Sigh. I hate it when there's problems with internet. Drives me completely nuts especially since I'm not a computer-person. But I HAVE to get the wireless working. cos right now, there's only one person that can use the internet if we just use the modem. But I think my housemate has to connect directly to the router itself cos her laptop doesn't seem to be receiving any wireless connections. It's like my laptop can detect about 5-6 connections (mostly locked) and hers detect nothing NADA zero. I really wonder what kind of lousy wireless card they gave her.

And I really gotta figure this out and safeguard my wireless and give it a password. If not, everyone will be leeching off my high speed internet.

Anyways... Take my quiz here

Tsukareta!!

Just climbed 3 hill up to my sister's house again. Actually I never planned to come here since I was just getting acquainted with my new house (which I moved into last night at 11pm) It's still pretty much a mess. Hope to clear it up soon. BUT I had left my bag of toiletries in my sister's car!! It had everything from my hair brush to my glasses to my toothbrush etc. So i was like ACK! No choice but to come down here after school today. My knee joints are starting to hurt each time I climb. Sigh.

And yes, School. Today was the first day of summer school. Had English at 8.15 in the morning. But I live.... 5 minutes walk from school (10 to classes!) so.. bwahaha.. i woke up at like 7.30 Glorious! English classes sounds pretty good. This teacher seems to be pretty relaxed grader and despite the short 7 weeks, we don't have that much work either. I mean, compared to my previous English teacher (Harrummph!!), now we have to read two short stories from our books daily, submit a reading response on (ONE!!!) story twice a week and we have 3 essays to do plus some quizzes. WOW! My previous teacher... we had to do a reading response on EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER! (mad woman!) and it's due every class, we have 5 essays to do and the books are so darn boring too!

Thankfully, my English books look ok. I've read one story so far. It's called The Pacific and other short stories. I think i will like it. The author tends to write beautiful/sorrowful stories related to war and tragedies like 9/11. I really think I will like it. Haven't gotten to reading the other book yet, but the foreword was hilarious! It's called The best American nonrequired reading. These two books look good enought to keep. Unlike the previous 3 books I used in my last english class, which I couldn't wait to sell after classes end.

FIlm class... was a tad bit weird at first. You see, my professor started talking in this really LOUD voice. And he was making his stand on how we were not allowed to be late, miss classes, talk in his class etc. And he went on to how he would drop us from the class if we're late and stuff. I mean, he was really Loud but I think he's a good teacher. He makes his stand very clear from the beginning that as long as we follow the three rules, we are guaranteed a B in the class. I was like woow... and yesh, I think film class is going to be a very interesting class!!

He showed us some snippets of films today. He just explained some of the techniques the director used and it's really cool. Like he showed us "the Replacement Killers" and "007 Goldfinger" and he was tellign us about color. cos the main character always wore black and white to show that there's two sides to them, good and bad. And in the replacement killers, Chow Yun Fat had a red tie and in 007, Sean Connery had a red rose on his side pocket. The red symbolism signifies that they are both sinners. Yep, he explained other things as well and gave us a list of movies we might we watching. There are some from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000 including Pirates of the Carribean. haha... my housemate loves that show. But it was funny cos i asked her about it and she had no idea what the heck Pirates of the Carribean was.
I was like you know, Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp.
She was like HUH?
I was like Orlando Bloom?
She said HUH?
I said: You know the second movie that is coming in July. YES? Pirates of the Carribean 2?
She said: OHhhh yeah! I LOVE THE MOVIE!!

hahahaha

Tomorrow we are watching Rain Man. ooh... must come to class on time.. must come to class on time. If i'm late, i'm dead.

By the way, I won't be having internet probably till I come to my sister's place again (probably Thursday) The modem hasn't arrived yet, so I can't get connected. oh and ppl, Read my story on fictionpress! It's ending soon. and I need more reviews.. esp Vicki's one, she owes me TWO.

BLEH... so tired. I was forced to go to the RSF today by my sister. (Berkeley's award winning sports facilities) She's accusing me of being fat and bouncy and she's picked up my brother's habit of saying "Bong bong bong bong bong" about the way I walk. HMMPH!! But these few days, I've been sitting at home and watching animes and eating snacks anyways.. haha.. so..

She's out white water rafting. She left last night to camp there first. Sounds exciting huh? But it was like about 100 bucks per person. She went with the whole Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors' society people and she's the one who organized it. She likes stuffs like this, especially snowboarding.

Snowboarding is um... pretty fun but scary. and very painful on the buttocks if you're a beginner.. trust me.

My mom's coming to visit me this Sunday plus I'm moving to my new house this Sunday too. and school's on MONDAY!!! O_O!!!! I'm pretty excited.. haha.. I'm always excited in the beginning cos I wanna know how the class will go, but the excitement pretty much fades when the homework and tests start piling in. and FILM CLASS!! I really hope it's fun. yay yay yay! As for English class, it's something i want to work get an A and get it over and done with. Grr... to think I could've finished English if not for that darn teacher. I'm gonna get a darn A this time. Can't have anything ruining my perfect GPA. (and when that day comes.... prepare for a big BOO HOO HOO from me)

Kelly told me to do this quiz, so um... yeah. Here goes:

Three Names You Go By: (i have more than 100 nicknames) Bel, Belly, NT, Beldee, Ah-put(don't ask me how this came by), Ah-bu-da-bel, Imelda etc.

Three Parts of Your Heritage: Um... Chinese, Indonesian, uh..?

Three Things That Scare You: Being murdered, spirits in the air, snakes

Three of Your Everyday Essentials: Internet, milk, house keys

Three Things You're Wearing Now: T-shirt, PJ pants, undergarments

Three of Your Favourite Bands or Musical Artists at the moment: Orange Range, Larc~en~ciel, Composer: James Horner

Three of Your Favourite Songs at the moment: Hitorijime, Platinum, Houki Hoshi.

Three Things You Want In A Relationship (other than love): Trust, freedom, fun

Two Truths and A Lie: I'm fat, I'm eating snacks now and I just went to IKEA.

Three Physical Things about the Opposite Sex that Appeal to You: Smile, eye color, voice/accent

Three of Your Favourite Hobbies: Reading fantasy books (or good books), surf the net, hopping

Three Things You Want Really Badly Right Now: Go back to Singapore and meet all my friends, Finish playing FFX, chocolate cake.

Three Places You Want To Go On Vacation: SCOTLAND, Germany+Italy, Ireland

Three Things You Want To Do Before You Die: Go to Scotland listen to bagpipes eat haggis climb hills get a kilt etc.(one full package), Visit Germany speaking German, hug everyone I love.

Three People I Would Like To See Take This Quiz: Kiki, PP and Vicki?

Was reading back on past blog entries from last November. Haha... the frog incidents and all... it was one of the best times of my life.

Anyway, I know spring is a long way off, but I can probably start registering for spring classes in early fall, so I thought I'll make a decision first. That is, between German and Japanese. The plan from the start was of course, German. To my dismay, all classes were closed by the time I had to register. So I ended up taking Italian, which I have to say, I am immensely pleased with. So, I shall of course continue to take Italian classes in fall and so on.

After taking a conversational German class once, I seemed to be afraid of taking German classes for two reasons. 1) 98% of the class have learnt German in high school. 2) I could not read the professor's handwriting. 3) I have no idea what the professor was talking about, ie: I was totally lost.

After that incident, and seeing my housemate learn Japanese, I thought of taking Jap classes. and since mid spring, that has been the plan. I even registered for Japanese classes for the summer, but dropped it due to the heavy schedule. My fall schedule is also full, so I shall be taking my second foreign language next spring. So, I thought, ok next spring, I'm going to take Japanese classes. But, these few days, German keeps popping back into my mind. I've been talking to someone who's taking German classes, I've talked to a German, and my mind says: "Ok, why are you abandoning your plans to learn German?"

So, let me now list down the advantages learning
German:
-I've been wanting to learn it since I was 14.
-I feel a strong sense of envy when I hear people speaking German, see German words, watch German movies, see German products (esp a VW) etc.
-I think German sounds very beautiful. Other people disagrees, they say French sounds the best ya-da ya-da.... To me, German sounds absolutely wonderful. Ja? and yes, i love the way German say Ja, Ja.. haha
-My dad would probably tell me to learn German because he is using German machinery in his factory and if he needs a deal in a future, I'm sure he wants his kid to speak German.
-It's likely that I visit Germany (more than Japan) because I like Germany better and I obviously DESIRE a Europe trip because it must and should include Scotland.
-German is spoken by a lot of people and it's good for business thanks to German companies.

Japanese:
-90% of the songs in my Ipod are in Japanese language.
-I am watching a whole lot of Japanese animes these days and good games are made in Japan. Plus Yuna and Alphonse Elric are part of the wonderful Japanese creation.
-Japanese might be easier to learn than German since pronounciation is not much of a problem and the Kanji is pretty similar to Chinese.
-Learning Japanese resources are plentiful!! Like the ratio of 50:5 compared to German learning resources. which means I can ace in class by doing extra work out of class, while it's harder to do so for German. But on the other hand, it also means it's actually possible for me to learn Japanese on my own while it's too hard to do the same for German.
-I could finally understand all the gibberish PP and Kurefu always talk about on MSN.
-Japanese is spoken by people all over the world since the anime world is expanding and most Italians I've met are learning/already know Japanese.

I don't know. I like both. I think both are useful. But I guess if I ever go back to Germany without knowing any German, I think I'll get high blood pressure.

These few days have all been rather hectic.

Well, last Saturday, I went to watch 2 movies. (but only paid for 1 ..hee) Over the hedge and X-3. MI-3 was showing too, but in the end my sister and her friends decided to sneak into X-3 instead. haha..

These two days, I've been going to IKEA. Bought quite a number of stuffs for my new apartment. Today, rushed there and got a bed and a desk. The bed was on a one day offer. As for the mattress, i didn't get a really great one. It's pretty thin, not like your normal thick bed matress. But I've been sleeping on the floor (on the sleeping bag placed on the floor) for the past week anyways, so I guess a bed would be better than the floor. There were two types of mattresses actually. the $79 one is harder, while the $99 one was softer. in fact, the more expensive the beds are, the softer they were. My mom seems to like us to sleep on hard beds cos it's good for the spine or whatever. But i don't like them. actually i like soft beds. I don't mean beds that like sink in, but reasonably soft and springy. sigh. but my sis told me to get the 79 bucks one cos it's harder and stuffs. Actually I like the softer one better.

Yup, then we also got a table. It was on offer too. Big table with some drawers and it was like only 30 bucks. i think the original price must have been close to 80 bucks or so. so it's really cheap. and we had to arrange for delivery service and stuffs. also helped my housemate to buy her beds and desk and bookcase etc.

Sigh, it's pretty tiring. and my sis' apartment is like full of my stuffs now. can't wait to move them out. can't wait to move!! Still gotta call up the internet company and ask them about internet. and pay my deposit for my electricity. gah. so much stuffs to pay for!! and rent!! and deposit for apartment!! and furniture and household items to buy! This month will be a very expensive month.

Summer school starts in about 1 and a half week. I hope I get settled down by then so I can attend classes without worry.