Should I?

The Phantom of the Opera will be here until May20.
I've just checked the ticket and I will still get one for May 20 if I want to..
but that means I will need to spend another S$147....
well.. Phantom is worth for $147 of course..
but I don't have much money left for this half of the year.. I'm a bit over spent.. for no reason.. hahaha

hmm.. maybe I'll make up my mind after I see the first show this Sunday...

Open my heart?

Ever since I left him 2 years ago, I lost my soul.
I still cannot stop blaming myself for making the stupist decision ever in my life.
I also don't know how I can manage to survive for 2 years without my soul.

My friends told me to open my heart for other relationships.
I wish I could.
But how can I open a heart that is already broken, that is already dead?

How long can I survive without my soul and heart?
I don't know, I don't want to guess.
I'm just trying my best.

Ms. Potter

watched Ms Potter just now..
didn't expect to cry that much..
but I did cry almost half of the lenght of the movie..

Phantom phantom I'm coming!!!

Today is the first day of the exam period, and now is 12:20pm.
And I'm done with my exam already!!! huahahuhahuhahaaa

However, the only thing that makes me so excited today and recently is.....
I'm going to see the Phantom of the Opera AGAIN this Sunday!!!!
I can't wait for that anymore!!! OMG!!!!

Yes.. I had seen the Phantom before.. it was 15 years ago... when I was so young...hahahaa..
I was still in secondary school at that time.. knew nothing about opera..
and I went to see the opera all by myself!! hahahahaa
crazy...

and this time, of course, I'm going there alone again!!
poor me??
not really...
I don't really mind...
this is something between me and the Phantom of the Opera only..
u really don't need anyone to go with you for this great thing....
this is just going into another fantasy...
OMG.. i'm so lack of words...
and I'm so excited and I really hope I can go and see it tonight!!!

It seems that I came to Singapore all the way just for the Phantom of the Opera now.. hahahaa
my exchange experience is enlightened by this Saturday!!
that would surely be my most happiest day this year! and these years!!!

I still remember I cried when I was watching the show 15 years ago..
and I'm quite sure I will cry this Saturday.. hahahahaaa...
nevermind.. no one knows me here... hahahaa...

oh.. i wish i have more spare money to watch a few more times before they leave for Australia..
(my sister will be able to see them for the 1st time later this year!! she is also very excited now! haha)

by the way..
I'll start my summer school early May, and finish by around early June I think.. not sure though.. hahaha
then I will have 2 months break before the next semester starts... which i really didn't plan for that before I came here..
so... what to do????
I can't go back to HK this time.. coz my mom will force me to find "summer job" which she never realize it is impossible to find job within 2-mths and it will be just a waste of time..
so I guess I will stay here..
then... what am I going to do everyday??
travel around??
I don't have enough money to travel to Indonesia / Thailand though... *sigh..
I guess I will spend most of the time walk around Singapore... not only to the "tourist attractions"
but also the inner side.. wanna take some photos...
it will need quite a bit of time since the weather is not always good here... need to have some luck...

other than that... I still have some personal things to do..

we will see...

anyway... put everything behind first, Phantom of the Opera is the only thing now!! hahahaha

A Visit to McDonald's Today

Today after my personal finance test, I went to Ang Mo Kio for something.
I suddently wanted to have McDonald's as my lunch so I went to the one just outside Ang Mo Kio Hub (a shopping mall).
This is of course not the first time I visit the McDonald's in Singapore, but this time was quite special..
I think this branch is quite special...
Here's something I noticed:

Straws and sauces
We are all very used to get the straws right next to the cashier but this McDonald's doesn't provide straws right there.
Plus, the staff won't give you Ketchup with your food.
Instead they will point you to a little station quite near to the cashiers where u can get the straws, napkin, tomato sauce and chili sauce at one place, but all customers have to use that single place though..
Besides, you don't get small packages of ketchup and chili sauce.
Instead, you need to pump the sauce on small little plastic saucers provided.
so the flow will be..
you get your food from counter -> take your tray to the sauce station -> put down your tray -> pump the sauce u need and get straws and napkins -> get seated and enjoy.
dunno why they wanna do that.. to stuck all people into that tiny little station
and the station is located right in the middle between the main entrance and the counters which make the places so crowded.
also.. the station is too small that only one person can use at a time, people need to queue.. (so u need to queue TWICE before u can eat)

A special auntie staff
I got scold by this very special staff..
I dunno why people always like to scold me for no reason... hahaha..
What happened was.. after I got my food, I went to the station to try to get ketchup.
There was already another lady there getting her stuff. She put her tray on the table of the station which left me with not enough space for the whole tray, but I can still put down my tray.. so I put down, with part of the tray "not on the table"
The lady left.
I was picking up the plastic saucers when this special auntie came.
She said something very fast to me in Mandarin as I was picking up the saucers..
I freezed myself because it usually takes me a second to digest Mandarin..
I looked at her, she looks very angry.. and she was holding a napkin..
so I was guessing "am I suppose to use the napkin??"
well...
of course not..
she was actually scolding me for making the station so dirty...
well...
first... the station is not SO dirty.. there was only one drop of ketchup right below the pump..
second... I didn't even start pumping..........
the thing is... there was suppose a tray to hold those drip over sauce.. but she was washing it and when she came back she saw the "drop"
so she scold me...
actually I didn't respond her.. coz I dunno how to respond.. hahaha...
but then she suddently yell at me again!
remember part of my tray was not on the table??
she angrily put it back on the table and blame me and say "what if somebody hit it by accident...."
anyway... I took my stuff and quickly ran away.. hahaha

Use of wireless technology
Since I found this sauce station quite interesting.. I took a sit that can see the flow of customer and see how things go..
and I found another special thing from this McDonald's
Whenever there are 3 people in the queue at the counter, a staff will pop out and get the order from the 3rd customer using a wireless PDA
then the customer will get a ticket/receipt, when he/she reaches the counter, he/she shows the staff there with the ticket and pay and get their food.
hmm.. first I thought they do it to increase their efficiency.. but how??
I noticed that when the staff at the counter got the ticket, they check with the system to see what the customer ordered and then get the food.
it was quite different than what I thought the technology would be used...
I thought that the person who order wirelessly would get the food as soon as they approach the counter.. and this is not the case..
so.. maybe they do it just to keep the customer there?
I mean they make u order the food first and queue.. instead of queue first and order food..
so people is less likely to leave the queue..?
I'm not quite sure about it..

Location of counter
This McDonald's is quite big with lots of seats, but during my lunch, I saw many people entered and left immediately,
some of them even turned around outside the entrance..
Because they can see the queues at the counters even outside the store..
which is.. quite a stupid thing to do..
I can see at least 4 groups of people turned around by just looking outside the store and u could tell from their faces that they were scared by the queue
and actually the queue wasn't quite long.. the thing is the queue at counters + the people at the station... make it looked very crowded!
even worst is... there were so many choices of restaurant just next to it.. so people just leave.

WIFI "necessity"
All McDonald's in Singapore provide free WIFI connections, actually many cafes do so too..
One of my projects this semester was on Starbucks (always Starbucks! ).
One interesting finding was that customer think WIFI is good, but what they also want is power ports for their laptops!!
(yeah true!!! with that, people can stay in a cafe/McDonald's for the whole day with just a few bucks!)
The girl sitting next to me this afternoon was using her laptop all the way during my lunch..
I had a few look to her laptop and she was just watching videos from youtube..
so this question quickly came to my mind "how come she doesn't need to care about the battery?" at least she didn't look like she worries..
so I looked at her laptop again....
interestingly... I found that her laptop was actually plugged into a power port on the wall..
hmm... I wonder do all McDonald's here have power ports??
If so, next time I'll have group meetings there!!
last time I had a group meeting at Burger King and we had to finish it within an hour just because of the battery problem!!

Changing definition!!
Almost forget this one!
When I purchased my value meal.. I saw the menu up there saying "all meals come with Medium fries and SMALL drink"
The word "SMALL" is manually changed.. just a piece of paper sticked onto the billboard...
and what I got was the same size as usual...
so the previous Medium size now became Small...........
is it happening in other countries as well??


By the way..
I had a McSpicy value meal and the taste was fantastic.. (maybe it's because I haven't had Mac for so long.. )
The McDonald's at Singapore is quite expensive.. a value meal is around S$5.xx - $6.xx
The Big Breakfast was $4.xx
As I remember, it is more expensive than those in HK and AU..
oh... and they have one interesting burger here called "double filet-o-fish" with TWO fish filet!!
hmm.. but I don't really want that... hahhaa
but the locals seems quite happy with the idea!

My first semester at NUS

Semester is going to end soon, here's my experience so far:

Modules
1. Promotional Management
Super great course! I am in love with it again!
Yes, I took Advertising at ANU during summer school before.
I did similar things before.. I did campaign before..
and the campaign I did at ANU, due to the time limited in summer school, had to be done in just 3 weeks, super stressed super fun.
and the campaign I did at ANU, my only partner (we had to do in pairs).. quitted the course half way... so I did it by myself.. hahaa..
But I don't really mind taking this course again (even before I knew how great the lecturer is!)
coz I really love this subject.
Back to the module I take this time..
the lecturer, Dr. Jorg Dietzel, is a super great lecturer in this area.
He has very long experience in advertising field.. and the main point is.. he's still in touch with the field.. which is very important.
The theories he taught was simple yet different to what I've learnt before.
and I agree that there should not be too much theories in this ccourse.. coz too much theories --> too much boundaries.
Every Monday 3-6pm is my most favourite time throughout this semester! The only time that I enjoyed.

There was a 40% assigment in this course, which we have to work on an advertising campaign with a real client.
This idea is not a new idea to me as the courses in ANU always to that.
But I think the idea of "each group working with and representing a real advertising agency" is quite interesting.
That was a great idea to let students learn instead of "pure talk" (well.. is it the right english to use? coz it's a translation from Cantonese)

For my group.. we had been time struggling whether to choose large international advertising agency to work with or local smaller scale ones..
we all think that working with large agency will gain us reputation BUT they may not even spend time on helping us..
so we finally chose a local well-known ad agency.. Mandate
and I do think that we have made the right choice.
Although we've only had 2 meetings with Mandate throughout the process, but both were very helpful and the Creative Director was really kind to us!!

The whole project was a great experience and I'm still very excited about it!
I am seriously considering choosing this field as my career right now..
but the question is.. Do I have the talent??

2. Consumer Behaviour
This is another interesting modules that I took this semester. Although I didn't choose it coz it is a core subject that I had to take..
The lecturer, Dr. Catherine Yeung, is also a good lecturer, and she's from HK.
I'm really proud of it.. coz everyone knows she's from HK and I'm from HK.. hahaha
and she's so young and I really wanna know how she can achieve all these within such a short period of time!
I like this subject coz I'm always interested in how people behave..
The problem was.. I understand the theories.. but as usual, I hate to memorize all those technical names.. as I don't really think that's necessary..
so.. my 2 tests were not very good.. hahaa.. one of them are over average.. but another one was below average..
but I know that I learnt alot.
and I can tell it when I do my group project.

3. Personal Finance
I still cannot recall why the hell I'd the guts to take this module.. as I'm always an idiot on finance.
I'm good at Maths, I did Additional Maths and Pure Maths before..
But.. I could never do finance!! and I'm also quite bad at Accounting..
I think I take it becoz I wanted to learn??
and turned out that it was quite difficult for me.. as usual.. hahaha
I didn't even know how to use a financial calculator before! hahaha
But of course again I learnt quite alot from this course.. on stock market, housing, importance of planning for retirement...etc
I failed the first test but lucky the percentage is not very high
This is the first time I failed something during my universits y studies..
The 2nd test is coming next week.. good luck to me.
By the way. I really have to thank all the groupmates I had in this modules, coz I think the group projects saved my life.. hehehe

4. Asia Pacific Business and Society
I really dunno what I should say about this modules... coz I dunno what I've learnt.. hahaha
most of the things in this course had been covered in some other courses I took in ANU..
but this time it is more brief..
for example, when we talk about business model in Japan, at ANU, we spent half of the semester to discuss all the details..
here.. we only had 1 lecture --> 2 hrs..
what should I say??

5. Asian Market and Marketing Management
*sign
I really... hate this modules..
if u look at the name of the course, u expect a lot..
But... turn out that.. it's nothing about AISA!!
because.. our dear lecturer... only knows things happened in Canada coz she lived there before
although she is from Mainland China, her views on China was very outdated.
And I really wonder why NUS can let someone who has only been researching all the time teach "marketing" modules??
Marketing is all about experience.......
I don't really want to talk about this anymore...

Lecturers
Generally lecturers at NUS are not as good as those at ANU..
The super great lecturer Dr Dietzel, is actually a part time one..
When I did the online course evaluation, I can't even vote him for the best lecturer!! so I decided to vote for no one!
I also heard comments from other students that generally lecturers at NUS (especially in Business School)
are quite lack of real experience.
So what u usually heard in class will be "A recent research shows..." (the recent research refers to the research done several yr ago)
Other thing is...
lecturers here are not as friendly as ANU.. the power distance is quite high..
whereas lecturers and even staff at ANU.. they are more likely to treat students as their "customers" or friends
interestingly..
yesterday during the last lecture of consumer behavior, the lecturer suddently said that:
"I don't provide free consultation for your other assignments in the future"
she told us not to go for her and ask her comments on other assignments after this course..
so.. i guess what she means is.. "u didn't pay, I won't work for u.."
and I guess this is the first time she treat us as a "customer"

Students
Students here are generally competitive.
It's not becoz they're Singaporean.. It's becoz they have to compete with each other to get higher score.
Whereas in ANU, we get what we get.
What I mean is.. the distribution of marks here for each module is a normal distribution, only a certain percent of people will get A+
but in ANU, if u managed to get more than 80%, u will get High Distinction,
but marks is also adjusted.. but only with the means of other years' results.. (to maintain the level of difficulties of the module)
So students in ANU are not competitive..
which one is better??
I dunno..
People say comptetiton --> improvements..
but if students are competiting within the same class.. they are quite likely to hide their knowledge to each other..
whereas for the students I know in ANU, they are more willing to share what they know in class..
Besides, when we come to Q&A session in presentations..
students are so aggressive here, they just pick anything, even minor point to ask..
they ask for the sake of asking..
At ANU, we asked.. in a more polite way.. and also we shared..
The thing is...
if u don't mind people getting higher marks..
u will be more willing to help
and the overall grade will be improved.
then.. why not?

I learnt all these when I was in secondary school already..
although we had to compete with our classmates..
but somehow we were very close friends.. (for the whole class)
so we helped each other..
and we did very well when we came to the open exam in Secondary 5

April's fool

I really hope this is an April's fool!!
I really hope that I don't need to do the things that I don't like to do and the things that I don't know what it is!!
I hate this!!!
really hate this!!!

how come I can't do those things that I'm skilled???
why???