You Know It's Spring When..

It was 5.30 just now, and on my way back from the library I heard the birds chirp. Days ago I spotted a squirrel on one of the high walls behind my flat. This means... that spring has settled in! Well, at least according to the squirrels it is.

On my previous post, there was a solemn tone to everything about CNY this year. Apparently I've forgotten the 10000-year old saying that life has it's share of surprises.

The elusive mandarin orange was spotted for the first time in 3 years.

Here's what happened on Week 5.
Saturday 02/02 - CNY Cookover at Adrian's place.
Wednesday 06/02 - EUSA General Meeting. (emo because no reunion dinner)
Thursday 07/02 - CNY Dinner with 19 others at Saigon Saigon.
Friday 08/02 - CNY Potluck with BuddhistSoc.
Saturday 09/02 - EMSA CNY Dinner at Chinois.

So as you can tell from past experiences, CNY Dinners are usually full of food, noise and shenanigans. And I had 3 consecutive nights of it. There are probably more than 5 photo albums in Facebook currently with pictures of all these events.

The weird thing was.. remember the strong winds that tried to blow Edinburgh out into the sea for a week plus or so? Yeah, it ended on Wednesday. Yep, CNY Eve. Thursday was a good warm day, Friday was warm and overcast. Saturday was warm and clear as f**k.

And today, was fogged up.

And I mean fogged.

Seriously. Very foggy.

But that's another post for another day. Think of it, how can the first 3 days of CNY be blessed with good warm (9-12C, and I really mean it, 12C is warm.) weather?

At the end it was a good CNY, as I've never had this much fun in a while, for so many days consecutively. At the end of it, it leaves me with a good optimistic feeling. I haven't got a good connection so a few photos will come up when it's better.

End point is.. CNY rocks! Moot. Oh oh, the general elections are coming soon as well!

Chinese New Year!

It's getting sad really, this is the 3rd year I'm not home for CNY, and there's another 3 years to go. No!!

Anyway, this year there wasnt any reunion dinner on the night of the eve. Instead, I went to the EUSA General Meeting along with Ang just to experience it.



It.. made me feel smarter at the end of it. Now, let's use the Malaysian Parliamentary Debates to compare it with. The Parliamentary Debates make me laugh. These, make me pay serious attention.

They started off with a headcount of people who came (191 people!), and then proceeded with an introduction, then the motions came. Proposers had to say out their name and matriculation number, then several for and against speeches were called from the floor. At several times there were points of information and questions that were made. All this were done orderly with the raising of the hand along with the matriculation card.

The first 2 motions I thought were rather boring-ish. 1st was to mandate the sabbaticals to press MSPs for the passing of the Graduate Endowment Abolition (Scotland) Bill 2007. Next was the motion to fight for a fairer deal with the university's corporate arm Edinburgh First, which currently charges a high price for students to use university buildings.

The next 2 were probably the highlight of the night. As I found out beforehand, the university has a Fairtrade policy that maintains themselves as ethical investors. Before this, EUSA has been mandated to boycott Nestle products from union buildings. Now, they are pushing for the non-renewal of the contract of mineral water supplier, Eden Springs, whom supposedly is an Israeli company (Mayanot Eden) harvesting water resources in the Golan Heights which were in breach of several UN Security Council resolutions. It was clear that at one side was the Palestinian Society & ISoc members and the other was probably Jews. Against views were focusing on the issue of politicising the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while the For views were focusing on ethical investment policies like in the past with RBS and Total.

The 2nd one was better, it was to reallow The Journal newspaper to be distributed within Union buildings. To keep it short it was a combination of powerful speeches and counter-speeches from various parties including both the editors of The Journal and Student newspapers, and even the current and ex-EUSA President.

In total I voted Yes for the 1st three motions and abstented on the last. But seriously I'd go for the next GM, because I never knew there were such vocal individuals and it never felt so good taking part in student activism.

And today is.. the 1st day of CNY. I'm sitting in my room, compiling notes and touching up on the EMSA poster. There's probably a dinner later tonight but the weekend's bound to be fun. 988's eradio is playing up so much festivity I'm feeling envious of the folks back home. So all you people, I'd echo the Petronas ad that says,"Please go home for Reunion Dinner". Appreciate it a$$holes! There're probably 50,000 of us overseas in various countries that aren't able to go home for CNY for many years.

Anyway this year's theme is probably to treasure the moments with family and friends back home because it never feels the same outside of home. So Happy Chinese New Year 恭喜发财 Gong Xi Fa Cai Kong Hei Fatt Choy!!

NSFW: Not Like Anyone Reads It At Work

We all know the Edison Chen (陳冠希) saga that exploded over the internet. I'll keep this short and just post the links. The rest you can find yourself, it's spread like wildfire.

Links:
Here
Here

When I Say A String, It's A String.

I don't know the reason why I'm blogging today. It was supposed to be strictly Photoshop only. but I had to look for pictures and online tutorials, and strangely enough I ended up here at Lily's Wai Sek Hong looking at food, which is really comprehensive. And now I'm really craving for Malaysian food.

Why, you wonder, am I suddenly associated with Photoshop? Because I need to get the event poster up and running so that we can all print and post them all around. Then after that is event booklets, and ticket sales.

After playing about with photoshop for 2 days, I finally noticed that it's actually simple. Mind you, I have never used it before. I'm not good with art in the general sense. Then tonight there's another meeting again, this time for us poor 1st years who are marshalls in the Edinburgh Super Cup.

Let's see what I have to do..
1. Compile Accountancy lecture notes from Week 3-5.
2. Update blog more constantly because the visitor counts are depressing.
3. Start work on the Economics essay worth 20%.
4. Start work on the Business essay worth 20%.
5. EMSA stuff.

At least, a sense of responsibility gives me a boost, like money to hobos or crack to junkies. Ok la, now that you know that I am not very free/slacky anymore, don't say that I'm slacking ok!

Post #175

I can't think of a title so #175 will do. It's a boring post, so I'll warn your eyes beforehand, but since you're here you're probably bored.

February is off to a great start. It's the -7C on the 1st of February, with a bloody cold weekend.

Some of you might be thinking, wow that's so cool I wanna go and see snow! You know what, it sucks. It's terrible when it snows (but nevertheless cool), and it's cold. and windy. It's been windy for the past week, and I didn't sleep right because of it.

Oh oh, who had 2 fire alarms in a night! I did on the 31st! and it's not fun. Not in the rain. And when you heave that sigh of relief and curse flat 5/8 for stupidly burning a toast and think that you'll finally feel warm and have a peaceful night, but no that's not the end. It rang at 4.20 again.

Apparently some jokers found it fun to break the glass and sound the alarm. But they ended up paying a fine and for the damaged door that the firemen broke open.

The first major DotA LAN party happened on Feb 2, and it was a blast, to me and Jun it felt like reliving the days of Concord again. But as usual, a LAN party will take approx 2 hours to set up. First game lasted about 94 minutes, which was surprisingly long and stamina draining. The next time it happens I'm going to take pictures of people stretching their asses like I did.

And now I realise I have a lot more things to do from today onwards, so I will be really busy for the next week, but I'll crunch some posts out because of a sudden urge to write. It's 1 in the morning and I'm still busy designing a poster so you get the idea.