sundwarf's Xanga

From Proctoring to Watching Comedy

Thu, 15 May 2008 20:49:53 GMT

I volunteered to proctor one of the Society's preliminary exams today. This exam must be brutal -- 1/5 of the exam takers jumped from the first couple questions to the last ones soon after the exam started. This sucked big time... the only lucky thing was, I wasn't taking it.

Sarcasm of the day --

I was so honored to witness one of the most skillful way of cheating in my life. Seriously, it was so skillful that every proctor saw that multiple times. It was also so frigging obvious that every time I saw him cheat I LOLed so bad, and totally lost my self control.

So here's master in the works: 45 mins before the exam ended, the other proctor signaled me to check out a guy if he looked at others' answers. He wasn't able to do anything for the next 15 mins however -- the gal who sat next to him hid her answers by accident (not because the guy noticed that we all looked at him!!!). Then when the girl started checking her answers, he copied her answers down. What was even more amazing was that couple of us were standing within 10 ft from him... I am so sure he was thinking "我見你唔到,所以你都睇我唔到..." Later when there was 15 mins left, he even started looking at surrounding people's, answer sheets, which made his expert cheating skills more funny that any comedy I have seen. I burst into laughers couple times, whenever he tired to copy something. OMG I still can't laughing now.

We DID NOT disqualify him right on the spot. Per Society's policy, we instead reported the whole soap opera to the Society. The result? The master didn't know we had already fooled him so many times, and he will not get a letter saying he is disqualified until the very day that the official results are released. I probably won't see him in exam room for 2 years too, since he's likely be banned from taking other exams.

Moral: We, as proctors, have been cheating skills than exam takers. Don't expect to win...

ROFLMFAO!!!!!!!!!!

31

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:44:48 GMT

I am 31 hrs away from my exam. I really hope it will be my last. Will luck shine on me once again!?

A very touching Ad

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:50:19 GMT

Perhaps more commercials like this will make this Earth a better place.

San Friend-cisco Day 2

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:02:53 GMT

I have no idea why it took up to one week for me to write the second entry about my getaway. I am such a &*^&*% lazy ass.

The first thing we have done on the second day morning was to visit UC Berkeley -- a college that I thought of applying (just for 2 seconds, however) a long long time ago. It's hilly, it's tiny, it's green and it has the best clock tower view -- from the top of their clock tower I witnessed the shocking nice view of downtown Oakland, SF and even Sausalito! Another amazing thing about the tower is that they have installed an elevator. Why can't Cornell do the same thing!? Anyhow, I still like to view of Cornell's Clock Tower more, just because. Yes because. Oh, FYI, Asian cute gals were absent the day I visited the campus.

Right after our short visit to Berkeley we were honored to have Kwan brought us to an excellent French restaurant -- Chez Panisse. God, the food was just too good to be ignored. According to Kwan, this place is incredibly hard to reserve a table for dinner, and all dinner menus are pre-fix. Good food, Great chat, fun times.

By the end of our meal it was already pretty late. We then had to rushed into Napa Valley to begin our short wine tasting journey. To my surprise Napa Valley is far more commercial than I thought. I remembered several years ago when I went to Sonoma it was a totally different story. Because of time constraints we were only able to stop by 3 wineries, and only tasted two -- Robert Mondavi, Sterling and Rombauer. We could not taste the wines in Robert Mondavi since it was overcrowded. The winery was also the least attractive among the 3.

Rombauer was our second stop. It was not located along the main road of the valley, and therefore the tasting room was really tiny. Still, crowds packed the whole place. We kinda liked the wines there, and we loved the view and the settings more. We were pretty close to getting couple bottles there, but we could not agree on one, so.... next stop.

Sterling Vineyard is simply wonderful. Although the tasting fee is the most expensive among all, it still worths more than everything else. When they have their own private cable car to babysit you uphill to their terrace for wine tasting and scene viewing, how much more can you ask for!? We bought 2 bottles there, and I am drinking one of them right now. I swear I will go back again if I have chance to visit Napa for a second time in the future =D By the way, we bought a bottle of Malvasia Bianca and Pinot Gris. Both are more than decent!

I will continue to write about the rest of the evening along with day 3... just because I am tired now...

San Friend-Cisco Day 1

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:18:35 GMT

It has been 2 weeks since my getaway weekend in SF, but yet I still haven't posted anything about it. So here we go.

No matter how close the exam is, or how many projects I have to follow up simultaneously, I still need a break once in a while. Since I am saving my vacation says for my 2 major trips this year (liar, I actually have more than enough days to use), I could only afford to go to San Francisco for a weekend. After all I really should not complain much as hotel was free and my flight was also nearly free (mileage owns!).

Since we were renting a car Joanne randomly picked an Inn close to the airport. I actually could not sleep well there because the walls were not sound proof. Again, it's free and so I didn't have the right to complain...

Day 1:

We left the hotel late because Joanne needed to dial in to couple conference calls. We first went to Half Moon Bay, located 20 min west of SF International airport. It's a very touristy small town, where you can find all kinds of gift shops and restaurants and more importantly, the ocean is within steps away. We went to an Italian restaurant called Pasta Moon for brunch. The pasta was surprisingly good. That was definitely one of the better, if not the best, Italian meal we had in quite a while.

After stopping by a marina nearby in Princeton, we drove north along route 1 to the city. The scenes along the way was nothing less than spectacular. Disappointingly, there was no earthquake (see pic below).

We arrived Golden Gate Park afterwards. I surely remember this place -- last time when we visited there we were planning to cycle through the trails but the fun was cut short because of heavy rain. This time, at least, I could see the sun. By walking and slowing driving through the park I wondered why I hadn't moved to California instead...

By the time we left the park, it was already pretty late. We were able to rush to Alamo Square and had a walk before going for dinner. Alamo Square is a park paved on the top of a hill, accompanied with a luxurious paranoia downtown view of San Francisco. Surrounding the square is a domino of rainbow colored houses. One may notice that many SF postcard pictures are actually taken here. We tried to create our own postcards as well =P

We stopped by the Golden Gate Bridge observation area (I have no idea how I should call it) while we were on our way to Sausalito. Again, it was our second time stopping by this place -- I guess I never get bored.

Sausalito is a small tourist town just north of San Francisco, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It owns excellent views of the SF AND Oakland skylines. Once the sky became completely dark we went to a restaurant called Spinnaker right next to the pier. To be honest it was the 3rd time we went there -- three years ago, when we first visited SF, we went to that place twice and we just fell in love with the place. This time the food was still good but then I ordered something that I didn't really want. Nonetheless the restaurant reminded me a lot of good memories.

To Be Continued...

罪

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:34:09 GMT

今曰點都要衰D rant 一次.

古語有云: 人樣衰唔係罪. 不過出來嚇人係!

Similarly: 人有體臭唔係罪, 不過逼人聞係!

天啊,如果你從來唔沖涼同埋換衫,唔該你唔好喺繁忙時間坐地鐵!! 攪到個車箱成陣屎除, D人要走去其他車卡避難, 包括我在內!!! 仲要唔止一次within last Month!!! 正PK

Sorry I dun rant very often but the smell was totally unbearable. People should at least be a little considerate, no matter you are sick or homeless or whatever.

What's in common between these words?

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:11:18 GMT

Intercourse, Climax, Panic.

Hot Water, Cold Water, Hot Coffee.

Frankenstein, Big Foot, Disco, Embarrass.

Odd, Uncertain, Fifty-Six.

Lollipop, Hell, No Name.

I am EMBARRASSED to say that all the above phrases are town names. I am dead serious!!!
http://www.floydpinkerton.net/fun/citynames.html

So perhaps when I say "I traveled from Intercourse to Climax, and soon I went straight to Panic" I am NOT kidding!

P.S. I wonder who will live in Roachtown, IL... or GaysLordville, CT...
P.P.S. Forgot about this one: Mianus, CT (pronounces as my-XXXX, got it?)

The best way to begin Chinese New Year is...

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:51:07 GMT

W.O.R.K.

Without any 先兆 my manager stopped by my cube before I set up my laptop this morning, saying, "Hey Terence... you'll have a lot to accomplish today." I was then asked to reconstruct part of a "numbers only" spreadsheet by putting in some formula and reconcile the output as close as I can. There are so many ways to model that, and the appraisal didn't mention how those numbers were calculated, so to get an exact match was as easy as winning the lottery.

I was able to get the numbers reasonably close, but later I realized that task was already the easier one. To figure out how exactly the manager wanted to implement it was the problem!! Suddenly new concepts where thrown to me, and I really needed time to digest. But there wasn't enough time. Soon I felt bad that I couldn't get things done.

Bad luck comes in burst and there's no exception this time. Due to work I was forced to miss the family gathering today, which was significant not only because of Chinese new year, but also because my grandpa just recovered from a major surgery...

Here's the worst thing. Around 10:25pm or so my manager and I finally finished up the report and sent them out. He then left right away and I called car service to pick me up. I was hoping to do more debugging work while waiting for car service. However, the lights suddenly turned off.... Okie I was totally speechless...

So, it's not a bad way to start a new year isn't it!?

The Art of Accent

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:11:18 GMT

When people can't pronounce words correctly they tend to sound funny. It's rare, however, to say something that completely mislead others to think something else.

Last night, after our ski trip we went to a Korean restaurant for dinner. That place was very tiny and crowded, so it was a bit tough for the waiters to bring food around. Normally they will politely say "excuse me" so that customers will yield a path for them. It was very unfortunate, however, for us to hear something else:

"Plsss Kill Me" "Plssss Kill Me"...

Seriously, this is a work of art. How in the world this is possible!? I wonder if some mentally impaired people would really kill him when they hear this. Gosh I hope he's safe at work.

7 Down, 1 to Go

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:37:03 GMT

After anxiously waiting for 11 weeks, I finally got my exam results. Yes, it was a pass!!!

I really thought that I would have failed the exam. Easily. When you don't have time to finish 1/6 of the exam, the chance of passing is really slim. Apparently luck is on my side this time =D

Time flies, and now I only have 1 more exam to do. My goal is to defeat it in May, so I can become a fellow by the end of the year. I know the chance is there -- if I can make a 7-exam passing straight, why not make it eight?