She talks. A lot. Good for me because I don’t talk much. Good for her because she needed to kill boredom.

There was a poster on the wall, depicting Siti Nurhaliza in her bridal gown. She, too, thought Siti is a husband-grabber. It’s weird. I’ve never thought I’ll be talking about Siti in public. I don’t really bother about the local music industry.

I am surprised a hairdresser could know so much gossip. Maybe that’s a natural trait. Women.

Anyway, it was until one point when she said guys prostitute themselves in Singapore to earn quick bucks. I merely nodded, as she went on and on about this. She said there are cases like this in Melaka, only well swept under rugs.

Then she started talking about husbands who seek affairs, along the way giving me real-life examples of people around her. She told me a story of a university student who fell in love with a local married-with-kids chef. I chuckled.

Then she said “You don’t laugh, who knows later you become a wife grabber yourself!”. Surprised, I said that’s impossible.

“But you look so lengzai!”

At that point I realised she was purely killing boredom. Her eyes were fixed on her customer’s hair all the time. Wondered she actually realised the orge I am.

Anyway, I think I like my new hair.

I hate my eyes, though. Why can’t I have big round eyes?

(Your call is important to us. Sorry, all our agents are currently unavailable… blah blah blah *muzak*)

Me : Hello.

Operator : Hello, good evening. This is xxxxxxxx. Thank you for calling Streamyx hotline. May I have your name, sir?

Me : J.

Operator asked for more identification. I gave her my full name and phone number.
Me : Yes. My connection was terminated at 12am sharp and I couldn’t connect since.

Operator : Okay, please give me a second.

…

Operator : Mr. J, do you have a splitter?

Me : Yes.

Operator : The splitter is the device that connects to your phone and modem.

Me : I know.

Operator : Now, try to unplug your phoneline from the splitter. This is to make a direct line from the modem to the wall socket.

Me : Okay.

Operator : If that doesn’t work, try unplugging all lines from the splitter, replug them back and try connecting again.

Me : Okay.

Operator : If that still doesn’t work, you can try replugging all the cables on the modem. Switch off your modem for 10 minutes. Turn it back on and try to connect.

Me : Okay.

Operator : If you still can’t connect, you may want to reinstall the modem driver. Restart your PC and then try again.

Me : Okay.

Operator : Please follow the steps mentioned and if you still have problems you may call us back for more technical assistance.

Me : Okay.

Operator : Is there anything else I could help you with, sir?

Me : No. That is all.

Operator : Okay, thank you for calling Streamyx hotline. Have a pleasant evening, sir.

Me : Thank you.

(End of conversation)

-_-”’

I wondered what will happen if I probed further.

Me : Okay.

Operator : And if that doesn’t work, you might want to purchase a new modem. Install the driver and restart your PC.

Me : Okay.

Operator : Maybe you need a new PC? Get one of our Streamyx-ready PCs at special prices! A promotion is available for current Streamyx customers.

Me : Okay.

Operator : If you still can’t connect, you might want to buy a spanking new computer table! It has not two, not three, not four, but five drawers!

-_-”’

Damn tulanED with Streamyx already. Considering switching to Jaring.

OMG. Jaring offering 1MBps wired connection at RM79 permonth!

But Melaka is not within their range of coverage.

Thank you for your interest. JARING Wired Broadband is not immediately available in your area now.

Sigh. I don’t wanna get stuck with Slowmyx. Help.

P/S : My connection was restored one and a half hours later. It was the longest 1 1/2 hours I’ve ever waited. Luckily Fabian downloaded Chibi Maruko. Or else I could die.

When I passed my math papers, I thought that’s it. No more Fourier. That was true for the next three years, because most of the subjects during that two years were powerpacked with theories about computers and networking and software designing and programming algorithms… you know, the really IT kinda knowledge. Knowledge that you can really apply when you use your home PC.

Right now, it seemed like I’ve taken most of my theory subjects and one Final Year Project (FYP) waiting for me. Everything was fine and Fourierless until today. The new ruling of the university demands each student undertaking their FYPs to have unique titles and if there was a group working on a similar title before, the group has to split and each member will select a part of the research as their subtopic. The subtopic will narrow the scope of my research, but that’s fine with me, as long as it doesn’t go too narrow.

I was given the choices of Image Enhancement, Image Restoration, Morphological Image Processing, and Image Segmentation. I went through each of the chapters and they all still seem alien to me, even though I have been using Photoshop for months. The concepts are pretty easy to describe if you want a layman version, but if you go into the details I’m as lost as… the characters on Lost.

The chapter that interests me most is Image Restoration. You see all those banks and speedtraps, they apply the knowledge of Image Restoration to catch criminals, by manipulating the image in such a way that the pixels of the images are restored from noise and filtering. There are examples everywhere on the Internet, but I find the following pair best describes the function of Image Restoration in real life.

This is a picture of a car, but is degraded by film-grain noise. After restoration with adaptive window median filter, the image turns out like this.

See the difference? In the second picture you can read the number plate better, hence maybe catching the culprit who has been parking in the middle of the road under harsh weather circumstances (that might have caused the noise).

Why all this in the Fourierphobia post? Because almost every website I Googled for, uses Fourier transforms for their techniques. I think it’s back to the textbooks for me again. *sniff*

Images shamelessly leeched from http://www.cs.uoi.gr/~galatsanos/IMAGE%20RESTORATION.htm

Then we came to a junction. It was no ordinary junction, the two choices were up straight or turn right. Two things helped us made our decision that is an abandoned car with keys in ignition up front, and a corpse down the right turn. Scared of the prospective of meddling with spirits, we took the car and zoomed ahead.

Even with car the journey was long and tiresome. My friend started talking about wanting to get more speed from the car to reach the hilltop faster. Hence, we got down and unloaded the car from the boot onwards, and continued our journey. At that moment I thought, “Hey, we just threw out our bags and stuff, are we going faster?”.

It seemed like we are, as my friend began to enjoy the speedy drive.

Every few kilometers or so, there is a right turn. And at every right turn there is the same corpse, all full-clothed. A glance revealed that it was actually a fat girl wearing long jeans. The long grass covered her upper body though. Can’t really see who it was. We just kept going, ignoring the corpse as the right turn was there to distract us from reaching our destination - the top.

Soon enough we reached the top, and to my surprise it was a horse ranch. We entered the ranch and saw two girls riding a horse. I have totally no idea who the girls are. My friend was leaping in excitement to see them! I guess this trip was for me to accompany my friend to meet someone, and that someone could be one of those girls.

True enough, the girls are sisters and their father owns the ranch. I think the guy was a boyfriend to either of the girls, and his (erm) ascend to the hilltop was to meet the parents. I recall being there when the first meeting happened. He was so polite omg!@ But I was too good of a friend to spoil his chances to get on his future father-in-law’s good graces.

That’s it. I woke up right after that, having completed my so-called “mission”, I saw no reason to stay in the dream any longer and “came out of it”. I still can’t explain the mysterious right turns though. Next dream, perhaps.

It was a heavenly masterpiece. Instant noodles with peas and sausages. Sounds cheap, but it’s enough to keep me content until dinner. That is, if I eat dinner at all.

I ate my lunch in front of the computer. I have approximately 5 seasons of The Simpsons to watch. This time, I believe I’ll finish watching it all unlike my previous efforts with Lost, One Tree Hill and CSI:Miami. Each episode spans about 20 minutes long, which is enough for me to gobble up my lunch, and even clean the mess in the kitchen.

After lunch it was back to my routine. Studying.

I flipped through Powerpoints, lecture notes and tutorial solutions only to realise that I haven’t really completed my revision before the examination, which begins tomorrow. I scrambled for my notes and tried to set up a schedule so that I’ll finish everything by 9am in the morning. Guess I’ll be losing sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll check out the Champions League result during my breaks.

I’m so lazy I didn’t even bother to boil water. I took two boxes of mineral water from home. My sis was supposed to bring them to KL, but they wouldn’t fit in the car, so my parents decided that I should have them. Melaka is indeed one of the warmest states in Malaysia and giving me the two boxes of mineral water wasn’t a bad idea after all.

Close friends will know that I’ve been missing for two weeks. I went back home to Batu Pahat to concentrate on my studies. It’s not that I can’t study in Melaka, but going home has its pros. I get to save some money, my mum cooks almost every meal. I don’t have to do the laundry; the maid hates it when I go home. With an air-conditioned room and a good view at the window, it’s so tempting to go home every weekend just to relax.

There are cons too. I won’t be getting the freedom I get in Melaka. In Melaka I could go out at unearthly hours and no one will restrict me. However, in Batu Pahat, disarming the alarm at that hour only spells trouble. In Melaka I have broadband. Sometimes I think I’m an Internet addict. Life without broadband is definitely unfathomable, and I’m not talking about the traditional dial ups. Dial ups will only add to the frustration.

Last but not least, I’ll be missing her more than I always do.

I’m done reading every single slide from every single chapter the stupid subject has to offer. The examination is just an hour away and I’m right here blogging to my heart’s content, sipping a cup of coffee (damn, that missing cup) and applying more Flanil to my aching shoulders and neck.

I guess I’ll need to pray as well, hoping I don’t surrrender the incompleted answer sheet early. In the previous examinations, I’ve been walking out of the examination hall at least an hour early because either I breezed through the questions, or the questions breezed through me. For the latter case it has always turned out bad. This time, I’ve decided to fully utliise the two hours and write whatever hell I could think of. Sometimes what seemed illogical may be the correct answer, as long as I don’t go too far in creativity.

I came home from class yesterday at 3pm, and slept all the way till dinner time. After dinner I slept almost immediately and woke up at about 5am. After some mild breakfast I came home to surf the Internet a little bit. Then my eyes couldn’t stand the glaring light of the monitor because I was still feeling groggy. Hence I went back to bed and woke up at 2pm. I ate lunch and slept again! Until 7:30pm.

Then I went out to play badminton. Now I’m home. Tired.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Though it’s only 4 weeks into the new trimester, it’s like a helluva ride already. Attending classes with number of students less than 5 is very daunting, not to mention having the lecturer fixing his eagle eyes on me, expecting me to concentrate on the subject matter like my life was on the line. Fine, I agree the ‘private tuition’ situation is beneficial, but I’m not exactly the kind of student to sit right in front of the class and listen attentively to the lecturer. I used to sit way back behind for a number of reasons.

Then there’s the assignments and tutorials to be completed. After so many years working with various people, I encountered many different types of groupmates. Some are too hardworking to work with - they make me look so damn bad. Some are too lazy to work with - these kind of people would usually force me to a corner at the last minute and I would end up doing their work for them. I don’t know much about my potential groupmates this trimester, but I am hoping for one who can actually divide the work among us equally and fairly so that I won’t have too much to worry about.

About the FYP, well, I’ve been enjoying the ride so far. Though it’s been tough, with the project demanding me to master a completely alien software just to implement my researches. Yes, it’s a research paper, but unlike most people, I have to build a prototype and implement the methods and techniques used. My project is mainly about Digital Image Processing, and for this project I am required to grasp the know-hows of Matlab so tightly just to make sure I can achieve an excellent grade for this. I just got to know that mastering Matlab could be useful for my future careers too.

Well, all work and no play is no good for me, so one of my few escapes from work is Anime. I’ve been watching Anime religiously for a few months now. To be honest, I used to think Anime are only mere cartoons that only little children would watch just to pass the time. I was wrong. I didn’t know that Anime could have matured storylines (not the perverted types, please) and sometimes funny moments that would make you giggle for short while, only to immerse yourself into the main storyline again to watch any developments closely. Oh, I don’t mean I watch serious Animes like Cowboy Bebop all the time. Sometimes I let myself watch other genres of Anime just to appreciate the different types of stories.

I’ve just finished watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or simply Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu. It’s about a girl (Haruhi) who thinks humans are boring, hence her goal in life is to find extraterrestrial beings such as ESPers, time travellers and aliens. What made it a little bit more interesting is that the Haruhi has an ability herself; to create reality. She really did meet the extraterrestrial beings but they seem to appear in human form, which is the only thing that takes the cake, if you know what I mean. The other downside is probably due to the jumbled up sequence of the Anime. The first episode comes with all the characters, and suddenly in the middle of the series, you’ll see one of the characters (Itsuki) being introduced to the main characters like they have never met before.

I know, that Haruhi series is old, and growing mold. But I actually do prefer watching Anime that has already been completed so that I wouldn’t need to wait for a week or two just to watch the next episode. With completed series, I would finish watching the Anime in about two or three days of consistency. It doesn’t take discipline to watch all those Anime (for me that is) because watching Anime is a form of relaxation. I think I inherited those genes from my mother, she does love to watch her cooking shows!

All work and no play is bad, how about no sports too? Lucky for me, I have a group of friends who invite me for badminton sessions week in, week out. It’s enjoyable playing with them. The only problem is probably that they are highly athletic people. These kind of people take up sport real quick, and become quite good at it eventually. I played with them for weeks and it’s a shame to say that I can’t hold a candle to them at the moment. I suddenly went berserk and invested in the game a little; bought a new badminton racquet in hope that I could play better. Weeks after, I learned the sad truth that “it’s never the racquet”, and I end up needing to get used to the new racquet as it is lighter than my previous racquets. Lighter means I have to hit harder, because F=ma (force = mass x acceleration) and the loss of mass in the racquet has to be compensated with more acceleration. I need to practice my smashes badly.

Er. That’s a little too much for a mild, mild update. Damn it feels good to write.