The Office

Now I'm back working in the office, normal 0900-1800 working hours. The first day was spent heading to the research centre in the morning to get a briefing on how to use the improved transcribing software. The first thing that came to my mind when the window opens: "Waaaa... so many buttons~" Hahaha, yup! Compared with the software that we used last year, this one's interface is filled with more & more buttons. But we didn't actually have to touch all of them except a few essential ones, so it's just a matter of getting used to staring at the window full of buttons, lol... The rest of the day and today were then spent on getting familiarized with the new interface and functions. My progress has been very slow so far, also due to some technical problems... but all is well now so tomorrow I'll be able to go full speed, ohohohohoo..... XD

Mainly in this entry, I'd like to share with you a music video that my sister showed me last week...or was it 2 weeks ago, hehehe... The song's titled "I Eat Cannibals". I find the lyrics sooooo funny, that I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed for quite some time!!! The melody kinda got stuck in my head for a few days too, though, lol... So here's the video that my sis found (watch the video to also see the lyrics):

Then I found the original MV for this song. It's actually performed by Total Coelo, a British new wave vocal group formed in the 1980s. The hit single "I Eat Cannibals Part 1" actually reached the Top Ten in UK back then =O Check out the original MV:

Somehow the first video is more entertaining, I think... maybe because of all the colourful dancers, haha... And after a closer observation, there's another funny thing about this song - if the woman's actually so attracted to the guy that she wants to eat him, won't that make her the cannibal here? Then, shouldn't the title be something like "I am a Cannibal" instead? Hmmmm... =/

The Aftermath of the Adventures at IMM

The adventures at IMM finally ended last Thursday! We didn't actually reach the final target, but it was really close... Oh well, we did our best and were quite satisfied with the final turn out. Definitely a rewarding 2 weeks experience - got to learn new skills, made new friends & know them all better, worked with great and fun people, interacted with strangers in a good way (including with kids, lolz). I definitely have gained more things now to be carried through my future endeavours (pardon me if this sentence don't make much sense, because I myself don't know how to express it, meheheheee~).

Of course I've got the chance to take a few pictures when we worked there, kekeke.... So here they are:

Us at work

The 'forever-modified' banner

An admin table, just for moi =D

Some shots taken using my laptop ^_^;


The latest form of the modified banner XD

The crew~

And thus from Monday onwards, we'll be back working in the office to transcribe all of the voice samples that we've collected. Will it be fun? Will it be boring? Gonna find out soon enough ^_^

My Programmer Personality Type

A week has passed working at IMM, and we haven't reached our target yet! Still short of voice samples of English-speaking Malays and Indians, so most probably we'll have to extend the collection to Thursday, haiz... The statistics looked quite bad last weekend... but the past 2 days has been much much better and looks more promising. I'm quite positive that we'll finally reach our target by this Thursday, whee~ After which is a short break, before we start transcribing all of the voice samples from next Monday, then another 'headache' will begin, lol XD


Today when we all chatted a bit during work (got time to chat because almost no one pass by our booth at that time), Nicole suggested that we take the 'Programmer Personality Test' online.. said she has done it but never post the result in her blog, haha... I don't actually code much except at school during labs, but thought I'll just do the test for the fun of it (and my hair's still wet so I can't go to sleep yet, hehehe...). Got the link from Hendri's blog, and here's the result...


Your programmer personality type is: DHTB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.

You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.

You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.


Hmmm, the result's rather true... not so sure about the Doer part, though, haha... If you want to try it out as well, you can find the test at Doolwind’s Game Coding Site.


Have fun~

And the Results are.....

Finally the exam results are out!!! Tried my luck to check slightly after midnight, and my grades for the semester just appeared on my monitor - I passed all of my modules, whee~ So that means I don't have to repeat anything & am promoted to year 3!!!! I'm so happy now that I couldn't sleep, although I have to wake up early for work later, hehehe... If I didn't calculate wrongly, I've done better than last sem, so it's a great great great relieve, phew~ ^_^;


And yes, my part-time job also finally started from last Monday, it's been 4 days already now. For the next 10 days, I'll be stationed at IMM to collect the voice samples every day, including this weekend *sobz*. So far it's been a very interesting experience. The first day started off a bit slow due to the first time setup on site, and also was rather shy & afraid to approach passersby in that mall, hehe... We were supposed to get people to record their voices for the research for 10-15 minutes. After all the jitters and hiccups, everything went very well. The response was much better than I expected, lol... Indeed, the $10 compensation for the participants is a very attractive offer.

Many many people agreed to spend their time recording their voices for us - students, office workers, aunties, uncles, tai-tais, grannies, grandpas... People from all walks of life were there! Interacting with them has been very interesting, too. I've learnt many new things like how to approach people, how to convince them to participate, how to pull in the groups of people that we're targeting at, thought of new strategies to improve the response from time to time, a bit of admin skills... and I think the way I speak has improved, maybe just a bit, hahaha... As usual, I'm experiencing something that proved to teach me several new skills that could be useful in the future =)


There are quite a number of interesting observations on the way people behave or react so far. Unfortunately, I have to head to my bed now because, as I said in the first paragraph, I have to wake up early, and need to conserve my energy to survive through the rest of the week camping at IMM, lol... Ah, but before I leave, I'd like to take this opportunity to do a bit of an advertisement:

"Get $10 cash in just 15 minutes at IMM, level 2 (outside Kopitiam). All you have to do is let us record your voice while you read several short and simple sentences, and the $10 is all yours! Only for Singaporeans above 25 years old, until 13 June 2007 (everyday including weekend, 1230 - 2030 hrs). Only left 200+ voice samples needed out of the target of 500, so come on down before it's too late! See you there~"


Oh and by the way, the voice samples are to be used to develop a voice recognition system (which could recognise Singaporeans) and the research is conducted by a local research centre. Currently we really need especially more Malays and Indians' voice samples (but still need the ones from the Chinese community as well, hehe). So your support in this project will be greatly appreciated (^_^)